Half and half

Rating: 5/10 (1 April 2007)

I went to an advance screening of GRINDHOUSE with one rather stolid expectation: I would absolutely HATE the Rodriguez offering and absolutely LOVE Tarantino's fifth cinematic endeavor. After all, I've of course been a fan of QT's since my younger days, and though I admire Rodriguez's apt ability to do EVERYTHING when it comes to the making of his movie (yes, the man is a technical genius), I've never really been a "fan," per se, of his work to date.
I've been looking forward to GRINDHOUSE for some time now, and as one of the only films of 2007 that looked even remotely interesting, I prepared myself for some balls-out fun.
Strangely enough, I had the exact opposite reaction to the film than anticipated.
Yes, that's right, friends: far and away, PLANET TERROR is Robert Rodriguez's finest film. And DEATH PROOF is not only Tarantino's worst film--by FAR--but it's probably one of the most boring, obnoxious, disjointed, lagging, poorly constructed, and distracted pieces of blech that has ever been made. Though, unfortunately, QT would probably slap his sweaty, bloated hands together in joy over such an invidious statement.
The trick here, of course, was that both auteurs were interested in creating a purposely derivative homage to the old B-movie/grindhouse films of the 70's. EL TOPO, ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE, et al. Rodriguez pulled this off brilliantly. His film was cannily reminiscent of those dog-eared films--right down to the editing and the grain of the film stock. The dialogue was at once corny AND entertaining, and he was able to put together a fine cast of actors who all played exactly to the source material (except, not surprisingly, for QT himself...cast in a minor character, he's the only one in the whole film who overplays completely, making sure everyone remembers who he is and what he's doing here).
Rodriguez has made something that is fun, vibrant, and alive in a way that few recent films are. He has taken from the past and recast it in his own image; it's truly innovative that he has indeed created a damn fine "B-movie" that is as "bad" as it is "good." You never for a moment get lost in any kind of "wait a second, what is he trying to do here?" reverie. No, you're blasted ahead at full-thrust, and by the time you realize what he's done, the movie's over and moving to the halfway decent "mock trailers" that link the two directors' efforts (once again, Rodriguez's own mock trailer is by far the best in the portmanteau film).
Tarantino's film, on the hand, is bad, bad, bad. And not in the "good" way that he intended or that Rodriguez pulled off so effortlessly. The first 2/3 of DEATH PROOF is so incredibly dead and languid that you wonder when the movie's going to actually start. It's almost as though someone has taken all of the left-overs from Tarantino's past films (you will definitely notice very obvious similarities, and not in that--"Hey, hey!" way, but rather in that, "Oh, I see..." way) and gave them to Kevin Smith and Eli Roth to re-write as a campy B-movie that doesn't quite deliver anything at all.
Yawwwwn. Whole scenes of awful dialogue go by and you wonder if they will ever end. Then when there finally is any action whatsoever, it's over before you have a chance to take it in, and then you're right back where you started with basically the same cast of Tarantino- femmes wearing the same outfits with the same hairdo's and talking about the same boring nonsense that would have been better elocuted from the mouths of characters in a John Singleton film.
The concept of DEATH PROOF is top-notch: Kurt "Snake" Russell running amuck with an awesome muscle car as he plows down young devotchkas. Unfortunately, this is not what the film is about at all. No, instead, it's about Tarantino's own insecurities melding with his yawningly dull fantasies that we're all getting VERY tired of being played out for the fifth time. This style worked with KILL BILL, but it's been done. Part of the joy of QT is that he "gives you your hamburger in a new way." But, now he's not borrowing from the past: he's just repackaging what he's already given us. Maybe there's a reason he normally takes so long between pictures...
The worst part of DEATH PROOF is that whereas PLANET TERROR almost seems as though it could have very well have been taken from the lost annals of 70's American schlock, QT's offering has none of the peripheral special qualities of the former flick. The few times QT tries to play in the game of his "brother" Robert--a "missing reel" here, a blatant mistake on the sound track there--you go, "Oh, yeah. It's a grindhouse flick." With Rodriguez, these intentional "mistakes" were seamless and worked within the film's universe. With QT, you just feel that he made a bad film and every now and then decided to wreck the editing a bit to remind you of what he's done.
My recommendation: stay for PLANET TERROR, leave for DEATH PROOF. And QT: Jesus, buddy: stop hanging out with Eli Roth.