Tarantino redefines what a turkey might be: this is very bad.

Rating: 2/10 (24 May 2010)

It is slowly becoming apparent to me that Quentin Tarantino is something of a one-trick pony. And it really doesn't matter how many cineastic references you make, if you make them in a film which is simply not very good, such as Inglorious Basterds, it all becomes rather pointless. So much is mediocre to downright bad about this film that is difficult to know where to start. That there are, ironically, several very good performances in it - despite the idiotic film in which these take place - can, perhaps, be chalked up in Tarantino's credit, although I think it is more probably that he or his producer simply struck lucky when he chose his various casting agents. Inglorious Basterds strikes me as nothing more than a bad TV movie script by a not very bright though puerile teenager which somehow gets to be made on a big budget. And that is being kind. We are asked to accept that a film which starts with the brutal massacre of a Jewish family can then blandly go on to expect to be regarded as something of a light comedy. For 'light comedy' is what I assume Tarantino thought he was making. But do graphic scenes of scalping and a man having his brains beaten to mush with a baseball bat really create that many laughs? Tarantino seems to think so. The films then meanders along a rather silly plot line involving a British film critic turned serving soldier, a well-known German movie star who is - larks! - an British agent, Churchill, Hitler, Goebbels, a young Jewish woman who escaped the massacre of her family to arrive in Paris to run a cinema - and on it tediously goes. Lord how Tarantino must have chortled when he wrote the script. How clever Quentin must have thought he was. There is no thought here, no direction, no heart. It is just a mush of ideas, with the odd scene which plays well. But none of those reasonably good scenes adds up to a row of beans when it is all stitched together into a whole. Oddly enough, it is almost far too ridiculous to take this film seriously on any level, almost ridiculous even to discuss it seriously. Tarantino has a certain gift for making a certain kind of film. But take him out of that comfort zone, take him away from his one trick, and the alarming paucity of his imagination becomes all too painfully apparent. And what on earth persuaded Brad Pitt to get involved in a project as tiresome as Inglorious Basterds beats me. If you think Abbot and Costello liberate Auschwitz would have made a great comedy, this is for you. Otherwise find something better to do and save your money.