Sewing machine

Rating: Null/10 (5 October 2007)

There is no reason not to make a film which leaps abruptly from one genre to another. From Dusk Till Dawn leaps from the hard-boiled crime thriller to the gory vampire monster movie at the halfway mark, and does it so blatantly (seamlessly? I think not!!) that you can see the stitch marks.
The reason why this genre-switching manoeuvre is not done more often is because, to anybody with any sense, it would appear that the result is not going to satisfy the enthusiasts of either genre and, given that the object of the exercise is bums on seats, maybe this is not the way to maximise the box office take.
Of course, closer examination of those cases where genre-jumping has taken place - Moulin Rouge, Back to the Future 3 come to mind - the results have often been critically and commercially pleasing.
In this case, I love the outrageous abandon with which the new genre is embraced. I don't care for the Tarantino character, and I don't care for the way the slightly less odious Clooney character shapes up as a kind of hero only by virtue of not being a vampire.
But the ride is fun.
And, even if it wasn't, the whole thing would be worth sitting through solely for the Santanico Pandemonium sequence - I would sell my children into slavery for the pleasure of sipping a good brandy from her navel (don't condemn me too readily: you haven't met my children!)