Ill Chills, Li'l Thrills, at Facile Bill's Kill Mill

Rating: 1/10 (12 April 2006)

It's a measure of how far you've come in the world when you can drive around in a flaming yellow truck with "PUSSY WAGON" in big letters and still have all Hollywood's A-list babes begging to be in your films. It's not a good sign of how far either the entertainment industry or society has come, but let it go. Fine-tuned professional assassin The Bride (Thurman) leaves her coven of knife-wielding Girl Scouts for the white picket fence but is murdered during her wedding by her erstwhile sisterhood, on the orders of their master, silkily manipulative neo-ninja Bill (Carradine, who can't be blamed because he sold out a long time ago). Trouble is, they didn't kill her dead enough. After a long, sexually abused coma (we're only just getting started, pilgrims) she recovers and embarks on a Revenge Quest, hunting down Charlie's Fallen Angels one by one, each encounter leading her closer to putting Chilly Bill on the backyard grill. Does she have more in mind for Bill than just an evening with sharp-edged kitchen appliances? Revenge is a dish best served liquefied, however, and if The Bride triumphs over her old girlfriends (I used to hang out with these trollops? she seems to be thinking), it won't happen without spilling more blood than the Exxon Valdez had crude. This film is too contrived even to be condemned as misogynistic, with the girls's unreal slicing/dicing cutesy machismo contrasting so crazily with their meek subservience to the sedentary Bill (Tarantino might have called him Dick, but that gag's been done) that, if you buy into it, you may be so confused as to need a remedial class in Gender Stereotyping. If so, try "An Affair to Remember" followed by "Tarzan & His Mate." That this film has nothing original is an understatement akin to saying that Enron was dishonest. No longer content to just ape the budget filmmakers of the past, Tarantino now embarks on a frenetic jamfest of the old cheapies. This includes, but is not limited to: TV, chopsockey, ninja-samurai, Spaghetti Western, anime, film noir, exploitation, sexploitation, blaxploitation and cereal commercials ("Silly Rabbit!"). I'll never eat Trix nor watch Speed Racer again without the dry heaves. I also won't easily take Thurman, Liu, Basinger or Fox seriously again (can you say "Typecast?" Good!), despite their demonstrated talent & considerable past accomplishments. No schoolgirls lick the spilled blood off each other, so Tarantino is evidently still too uptight for lesbian vampire flicks, "From Dusk Till Dawn" notwithstanding. And he hasn't taken a swipe at Sesame Street yet. An artist must have standards, right? (I just hope a deadly Asian swordmaiden named Cookie Munster and her lovable but dumb boyfriend Biggy Byrde aren't in our cinematic future). He still hasn't redone it all ("Truck Turner" featured sex slavery & a lynched cat) but what he's redone is impressive, if tasteless. Unfortunately, the old cheapies were only made to give a few fast thrills in exchange for a couple of fast bucks. What charm they had, such as Isaac Hayes's glowering presence, Lee Van Cleef's steely smugness, Michelle Yeoh's sexy ferocity & Bruce Lee's matchless, butt-kicking art, was incidental--someone would have done those scripts, if they hadn't. You could take them or leave them, but "Kill Bill" rubs into our faces a sense that we are being honored with an interpretation of a high art form. It just isn't there. Wanna watch "Kill Bill?" Get a party mix of Cap'n Crunch, Count Chocula and Lucky Charms and do shooters of Jolt Cola in Quik Strawberry mix. I Dare ya! I DOUBLE Dare ya! By the way, there's a "Kill Bill Vol. 2," but let it go.