Moments of brilliance but barely watchable

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 2009)

I went into this movie with high hopes, and I came out pretty disappointed. This movie was slow. If you are annoyed by pointless Tarantino dialog in movies like Reservoir Dogs (bickering about tips, or who has to be Mr Pink) prepare to be gritting your teeth 3/4 of the movie. About 5 minutes into the first scene I was squirming with boredom. this movie is all buildup with no payoff.
We wait for a good 2 minutes for a guy to come out of a dark corridor with a bat. We just stare at the tunnel while he thumps the bat against the wall. Presumably this is supposed to be suspenseful, but it just comes off as annoying. The first scene we know what the outcome is going to be, but we sit through about 5 extra minutes of pointless talking. I have no problem with a conversation if it furthers the plot, but every scene was way too long.
The problem seemed to be that Tarantino chose to follow the less interesting plots in the movie. This is not a Brad Pitt movie, and it certainly should have been. He was brilliant. I should add Christoph Waltz as Landa was great too. If the movie just stuck to them, and didn't bother to add the bizarre love story last minute between Shoshana and the black projectionist, or a painfully long bar game with characters useless to the plot, or waste so much time on the star of "A Nation's Pride"; it would have been far more enjoyable.
Also, for no reason Samuel L Jackson narrated 10 seconds of the movie. Then we never heard from him again. Mike Myers shows up for an unnecessary scene where they should have used someone else. It should have been an old English man, instead of Myers in silly looking make up. There was no reason to use a famous face for that inconsequential part. He didn't do anything special with that part. Knowing it was him only made it seem silly.
To be fair, this movie had a lot of moments that were funny. It had some violence that, while disgusting, paid off in a major way. The problem was the payoff was delayed so long, I was always just wanting it to be over by the time it happened. Don't buy into the hype. It was a movie, that could have been quite good and was instead ruined.