Same old Same old

Rating: 2/10 (28 August 2009)

Inglourious Basterds delivers the expected - another Tarantino film that is bad, but way too restrained to be bad enough to be good. I acknowledge the usual attempts Tarantino makes at clever genre mixing, witty dialogue, and dramatic characterization. And once again these pretensions are as painful as blows to the viewer's head with a baseball bat. It's time to admit that skillful story telling is beyond Tarantino's talents. That leaves us with his trademark sophomoric fascination with violence. Why does he once again hold back from the full blown B movie extravaganza he was meant to make for us? Taking a very bad movie to comically bloody heights is a talent Rob Zombie has, and Quentin at heart seems to aspire to this, but he never quite reaches it. If only Zombie had mentored Tarantino on this one - Basterds could have been great - but, in the end the wrong Michael Myers was cast into the film.