Unfunny is funny with Tarantino

Rating: Null/10 (1 November 2003)

I say "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" is a success - for what it is, anyway. The style and content of this movie will vastly narrow down its viewing audience - obviously, it isn't suitable for children, and even many who are of eligible age will be turned off by the gore - so we have to wonder, why did Tarantino make this film? I'm convinced that he just likes to make movies. His way. He takes pride in being unique - indeed, his uniqueness has earned him critical praise left and right. What I love about this movie is that it shows us once again, as we saw in Pulp Fiction and other QT films, how he loves to make us find humor in the fundamentally unfunny. I read a user comment on this site the other day that said violence isn't funny, and people getting killed is serious, and we shouldn't be laughing at it - and I think that's the point. QT doesn't think killing is funny, but he wants to make people laugh when they don't expect to laugh, which is why he presents the killing in such a cartoonish way. I read that in the House of Blue Leaves scene alone (the Japanese club at the end) they used 450 gallons of fake blood. Come on, that's not realistic. And once you've seen a waterfall of blood spewing from a lopped off appendage a few times - yeah, it's a little funny. There's a scene early in the film where The Bride is in the home of one of her former colleagues, now enemies, conducting a brutal, gruesome fight, when the woman's young child walks in the door from school, and the two women try to cover up that they've been fighting, despite the blood all over them and the ransacked house. When that scene happened, the theater literally burst with laughter. You see what he's done? It's subtly brilliant - he's taken a situation and a moment that in any other context would be horrifying, and would cause the theater to collectively gasp - and made it funny. No one can do that like Quentin. Anyway, if you have kids, DON'T TAKE THEM to see this one, and if blood makes your stomach turn, you might avoid it as well - but, if you like quirky, unexpected, well-directed movies with amazing fight coreography, Kill Bill is for you.
-Kyle