Like Pickles and Ice Cream

Rating: 3/10 (25 April 1999)

This is a troubled film. If you're looking for a good Tarantino-esque crime drama, you'll be disappointed; if you're looking for a good horror spoof--no dice, either.
This film is like pickles and ice cream--separately, you may like either, but together they taste horrible--and it would take a decidedly skewed state-of-mind to accept then at the same time. The film begins very promisingly as a dark and gritty gangster film and sloppily switches to a gratuitous sendup of Hammer horror films. "From Dusk Till Dawn" represents everything that is wrong with the post-postmodern film world--if you can't innovate, imitate. Unfortunately, Tarantino and Rodriguez don't seem to be able to do either very well, anymore. Clooney's character is as interesting as his stereotype can be; Keitel looks like he's doing the filmmaker a favor; even Salma Hayek comes off as unsexy and completely non-threatening as the "main" vampire. What you get, instead of "two great tastes that taste great together," is a film-schoolish, "look at me" barrage of excess that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Don't say I didn't warn you.