Rodriguez delivers, Tarantino needs to come down from his cloud

Rating: 6/10 (7 April 2007)

Arguably, the appeal of a gimmick such as billing two films together to imitate the style of the grindhouse B-movies of the 70's is twofold: 1. Enjoy the rarefied characteristics of B-movies, held up to the artistic microscope and re-examined for ironic value, parodic value, and super-conscious manipulation of the elements of these films, and 2. Giving audiences two films for the price of one, real-feeling trailers and cinematographic conceits designed to revel in this fun and responsible atavism. Rodriguez delivers. His film is richly entertaining, suspenseful, action-packed and knows when to discard of characters, never betraying the ironic detachment from creative empathy, quoting the style elegantly. It is a film that does the job of creating a purposely bad film that ends up being good for parodic reasons. Quentin Tarantino is obviously a director usually delegated to a higher echelon of film-making. One of the best best, maybe best 10 directors in the world. One can imagine that the Rodriguez film is an appetizer for a genre-subversion alike the genius of Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. And yet his film is absolute crap. No, it's not so bad that it's good. And no, it's not so good that it doesn't feel like a b-movie. It's so bad that it's...bad. The only thing even closely resembling a cohesive device is allusion to his own foot fetish, with foot-heavy framings and foot-infused conversations applied wherever possible. Where QT had a chance to transcend the ironic appreciation of the B-movie, (ideas: playing with the missing film reel segments, making on-purpose/accidental allusions to the first film, mimicking his own films or famous films in satiric way, using double meanings or double entendre's in campy deliveries, playing with audience a priori knowledge) he does NONE of these. It's as if in writing this film, he kept telling himself, "No, Quentin, it's supposed to be bad." Either that or the Hollywood glitter has completely gone to his head. I think good directors are allowed to make mistakes, but when it's because they're pretentious, they need to me admonished. Instead, plenty of reviews even claim that Death Proof is better than Planet Terror. These are written by pretentious morons that would fellate QT if he made a spin off of Pluto Nash. They have no understanding of human nature, no true sense of humor, by extension for this film: no understanding of hollow story, hollow structure, one-dimensional characters, mundane and drawn-out dialogue. It's disappointing to think that critics have a handle on good and bad films, and then watch them perpetuate QT's ego instead of forcing him to reevaluate himself, with the favored end of making more genius films.