A video game adaptation that skipped making the excellent game

Rating: 3/10 (22 March 2019)

This is exactly the kind of movie I like. But I struggled to get into this.
I think Tarantino made the error of thinking that a tragic heroine was the same thing as a sympathetic one. I don't know if it's the curt script or Thurman's smug, complacent performance but I found the bride to be a deeply unlikable character. I didn't want to root for her but almost did for the final battle because her opponent was even harder to like. I don't love to hate them. They just annoy me.
This is definitely a pretentious movie in my opinion. Stylized is good. But this movie seems to have no lucidity about itself, it's deadly serious for the most part despite its bombastic plot and content. The few moments of humour just feel jarring and out of place, not because they feel crass but because it makes you wonder why they had the tone the way they did.
So there's stuff like a sudden animation sequence, that's fine. But you can't just shove that in our face as if it's no more expressionistic than just doing a montage. You need to sort of gag your way into it.
This could have been amazing. But the style and the videogame violence (I do really want to play a game with this kind of violence) just fall flat because I don't feel in on it. It's so full of itself and annoying that, no, you certainly CAN see one without the other.
I keep taping Volume 2 but I keep putting off watching it because I have such low expectations for it.