Once Upon a Time ...driving around Hollywood circa 1969

Rating: Null/10 (25 September 2019)

I wasn't as excited to see this movie as I have with most Tarantino movies, especially since I heard from a friend who's opinion I value, that it wasn't very good, so my expectations were low. I heard most people walked out 75% through, which is unfortunate, since the end makes up for what the rest is lacking. If it wasn't for Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) then the movie would have been much worse. I understand that people loved this movie, especially people from Hollywood and rabid Tarantino fans, where he m could make a movie filmed entirely on the female characters feet, and he'd be called a genius. Now the 3 main scenes with Cliff are excellent. However 75% of the movie is clips from shows and movies that don't exist. There is a lot of painfully long driving scenes as well. I think that Tarantino had a simple idea, and made a fictional version of 1969, that takes place in the Tarantino universe. I get that character development is important, however, an actor having a career crisis does not need long clips of his previous work shown to the audience, firsthand. Maybe they could have been in the background of scenes where things are actually happening. It's also not important to show in almost real time, how long it takes to get to Cliff's apartment from Rick's (DiCaprio) house. I think this movie has a few good scenes, and a great take on certain things from Tarantino's universe, and the rest is filler. What about the party? Mostly with people who play famous people, and that's all they do in the movie (aka Damien Lewis as Steve McQueen). Not essential to the movie. The scene could have been cut and the movie would have been fine. Same with a character going to the movies. It just goes on and on. If you take out all the filler, you have maybe a 45 minute movie. All that being said, I really did like this movie for what it ended up being. I just wish there was more content relevant to the main story. Cliff's backstory, and character could have been developed much more! They left a big stigma with his character, ambiguous. I know this was probably intentional, but when you have long clips of Rick's shows, and movies, or long pointless driving scenes, it seems like you'd go to character development that the audience would actually be curious about. This film is probably his most pretentious, and with the exception of the 3 main scenes with Cliff (which made the movie) it was very bland.