Well, it's better than Kill Bill, Vol. 1...

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2005)

But it still doesn't reach it's lofty potential.
Now let's get one thing straight. This is a much, much better film than Kill Bill, Vol. 1. There is interesting character development and some twists and turns, plot-wise. Everything with Michael Madsen is great. Thurman's training flashback is well done.
However, it still doesn't overcome the fact that Tarantino didn't make me care about Kiddo in the first film and, by the end, I still don't care. The confrontation with Bill is absolutely the worst part of this film, especially with as much dialogue as they have. Dialogue has always been Tarantino's hallmark and it just generally falls flat here. It's not actively bad, just pedestrian. The superhero analogy is the one shining moment at the end of the film.
The film throws a plot curveball about two-thirds of the way through, but, strangely enough, it's not really a curve ball at all. The plot would have been resolved with or without it, so it really doesn't make any difference and eats up a lot of screen time.
Now I'm of the camp that if Tarantino had just edited these films together, this probably would have been a much better movie. There are good parts of both, but I feel that as two separate entities, they largely fail. Together, they could have shored up each others weaknesses. The first Kill Bill is largely plot less, with bad action and bad dialogue. The second is often times boring. Together they could have been an average movie, instead of two bad ones.
Once again, I would suggest seeing this, just because it is in our culture and it helps in social discussion to be able to talk about it, but don't expect a masterpiece. It's light on originality and heavy on cliché. Not quite as dependent as the first film, but there is not much inspired here in the script. A visual and technical feast, but a midnight snack as a creative film.