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.