ARRRRGH!
That could pretty much sum up Grindhouse. 3+ hours of crap. I went with John and Brian to see this movie…so unfortunately, I couldn’t just leave unless I wanted to hoof it home.
Maybe I should’ve.
The first rule of Fiction Writing (according to Kurt Vonnegut) is: 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Thanks, you bastards, for stealing 3 hours of my life.
Grindhouse: you have two movies made by two guys who love movies. There’s brain eating zombies, strippers with machine gun legs, muscle car showdowns, Kurt Russel with a scar…what’s there not to like?
A lot.
The first, Planet Terror, is over an hour and a half long. Except it’s not bad enough, or good enough, to be enjoyable. If it wanted to be bad, it should’ve gone the Evil Dead II route. If it wanted to be good…well, then Rodriguez should’ve made a good movie.
After about forty minutes, I wanted to yell ‘I GET IT’.
Now, the trailers before and between the two movies were absolutely brilliant. Thanksgiving, Don’t, Werewolf Women of the SS, Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun…fantastic. But they conveyed the entire feel of the B movie in approximately 10 minutes.
Then, the second movie starts. Death Proof, by Quentin Tarantino, stars Kurt Russel as Mike the Stuntman, a homicidal stalker with a muscle car (Kurt Russel is fantastic). At the core, the movie could’ve worked …but Quentin has fallen in love with himself, and obviously thinks that any dialogue he writes must be golden.
It’s not.
We honestly don’t need to hear 15 minutes of girly gossip. Then, when you kill them off, we don’t need to hear ANOTHER 15 minutes of girly gossip for the next batch of characters.
The car scenes do steal the show (except honestly, why doesn’t she just use the brake once?????).
In fact, I couldn’t help but think of Mad Max. Mad Max was a TERRIBLE movie that was saved by: Mel Gibson, and some random car scenes. But it was made by some film students and wasn’t supposed to be good. This was made by a guy who is considered the great American film auteur.
Honestly, how did this movie get 81% at RottenTomatoes? Is it because all the critics are afraid to say they don’t like a movie by Quentin in fear that someone will say ‘you just didn’t get it’? There was nothing to get.
This movie was bad.
Bad.
Very bad.
Maybe I should’ve just stayed home and watched 3 hours of Arrested Development…
See, if you watched AD instead of your movie you would have found this….
“Why dont you get Gob to do your dirty work for you? Shall I knock Dad out and chain him to a pipe somewhere, or should I risk another herpes outbreak with Kitty? Which is it this time, Michael?”
“Well, definitely neither of those two…”
My favourite part was when it was over and we were going home and I was wondering how I could reclaim those hours.
You know I would have been fine with just the Hobo with a Shotgun trailer.
Now that I’ve had time to digest what you were telling me last night about critics loving it, I think I know why: I think it comes down to the one thing: that as a craft, both films, start-to-finish did a great job of looking and sounding like B grade movies. Which unto itself, you’re right was solved in the trailers.
So they give us two movies that ultimately don’t have a lot to them. The critics think well, that’s great, cause that is exactly what B grade movies did What they completely overlook is that one hour and a half movie might have been palatable. But two back to back and you’re PAINFULLY aware of how much time you’re wasting watching the filler. I think the critics forget 1. that they don’t pay to see the movie, and more importantly 2. It’s their job to do this, as in their paid to waste time out of the day watching this. That is how they bypass the idea that two movies totaling over three hours of maybe an hour’s worth of material offer us nothing new, nor do they take us anywhere. It would be like Aerosmith recording the same quasi best-of album and touring it ad nasuem er wait a minute!
The rest of us audit movies on whether they were a worthwhile investment of their money and time. You, Brian and I all are owed about two hours of our life back. My only solace is knowing that we TOTALLY smuggled in Nibs. Screw you Tarrantino!!
A little bit more….
Narrator: Tobias listens to a day’s worth of his own words, to see what Michael was referring to…
Tobias Fünke: [on tape] … even if it means me taking a chubby, I will suck it up.
Tobias Fünke: Nothing wrong with that.
Tobias Fünke: [on tape] Oh, I’ve been in the film business for a while, but I just can’t seem to get one in the can.
Tobias Fünke: It’s out of context.
Tobias Fünke: [on tape] I wouldn’t mind kissing that man between the cheeks.
Narrator: …and he realized there is something distinct about the way he speaks.
Tobias Fünke: Tobias, you blowhard.
[chuckles]
Actually, Tobias would say: Here’s a banger in the mouth. At which point, Michael would correct him that in America, they call them sausages, not bangers.
So a Sausage in the mouth.
What’s that got to do with anything? I have no idea, but it’s funny.
Ok, it was bad. Did you get in for 2 for 1, or did you pay full price? Cause that would suck hard as Tobias would say
Aww. You’re breaking my heart here. That was on my list. Or maybe not.
Michael on the phone to his ‘sister’: You forgot ‘away’. She’s blowing everyone ‘away’.