Did you like the trailer? Well watch this movie instead.

Rating: 4/10 (11 December 2009)

Before I write anything else, let me establish some things.
I wasn't offended by the violence in this film.
I wasn't offended by it's portrayal of Germans/Jews/Tennesseans.
I wasn't disappointed by the campy, occasionally over-the-top performances.
I wasn't disappointed by the action movie size plot holes.
I wasn't upset with the alternate reality turn of events.
I enjoy Tarantino films, but not enough to own all of them...
... and this is one of them.
It wasn't a bad movie really. It was just kind of boring. While there was some action and humor, mostly there was just dialog. And while I enjoy dialog heavy films as much as any three line action flick, I like to feel there's actually a point to all the talking. Where Tarantino once put a lot of character into quirky conversations or tense exchanges, here he just seems to be filling up space. Some of that character occasionally pops up in Basterds, just not often enough to keep me interested. Any tension that was built up early in a scene would slowly fade away as the conversation just marched on.
There's no real fault with the cast here. All the actors do a fine job with what they're given, it's just that they were given way to much or, oddly, not enough. For every character that has nearly endless lines of dialog, there's another who, despite seeming to be someone of significance, wanders though a scene and (usually) dies. Even more bizarre were the characters who were introduced, talked endlessly, and then died. They weren't around long enough or didn't say anything that made us really care for them and, despite being ably acted, mostly seemed to exist just to extend the length of movie.
The best thing I could equate this film to would be sitting in a restaurant, eavesdropping on the table behind you for two and a half hours. Half the people at this table are utterly uninteresting and the other half are obnoxious assholes. Every now and again there's some conflict and occasionally something funny gets said, but mostly they just prattle on while you're waiting for dessert.
As a side note, for a bunch of guys who built up a reputation as Nazi-killing boogiemen (during a period the films mostly skips over), they seem incredibly inept or unlucky when we catch up to them. Any tension I felt was from wondering how they would manage to screw up what was coming next. I would have been more interested in a movie about the Basterds and who they were than what Tarantino decided to show us.