Pure pleasure

Rating: 8/10 (1 May 2008)

By far the most enjoyable Robert Rodriguez movie I've ever seen, "Planet Terror" succeeds mostly because the actors and the director have a grand time and because the ironic distance is kept to a minimum. In fact, the affection, respect even, that the filmmakers have for the genre registers in every frame, and that's evident in the fake trailers and the missing reel stunts. They are trying to recreate, not just a type of film, but the whole experience of watching one. For the most part, they succeed. Tarantino's half of this project, Death Proof, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. He's evidently got too big an ego to just get out of the way. As a result, his "auteurist" marks are all over the least successful parts of the film, and the most boring. The best bits are the most generic. (His use of Kurt Russell is brilliant though.) As a whole, Grindhouse is very funny, clever, quite gory and rarely boring. This is what Troma Team has been trying to do, and mostly failing, for the last 20 years.