Disappointing and pointless rewrite of history.

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2019)

The ending of this movie was a great fantasy... imagine if the Manson family members were killed by a soon to be out of work stuntman, who beats Bruce Lee in a fight, his dog and his aging actor boss... wow, I mean why not just imagine that the Vietnam War never happened and JFK/RFK/King were never assassinated? The problem is, they were and as much as we wish we could erase those events, we can't. This movie had a lot of promise, to be a behind the scenes glance into the obvious psychological issues associated with stardom and maybe show the Manson murders from the point of view of a Hollywood insider. Instead we got this rambling attempt at nostalgia.
I read that Sharon Tate's sister gave this movie her blessing, and I understand why since the Manson family is portrayed as the dangerous monsters they are (although with probably a lot more wit than they possessed), the murderers get their full-on stuntman/pittie comeuppance, and, in the universe of the movie, her sister is still alive. This is the danger of a movie like this, where historical events are replaced by fantasy. The writer has a great responsibility to the people who are still around after and still hurting but also to the vast majority of the public now that doesn't remember or know about the Manson murders. I worry, that with the way things are now people will substitute in fantasy outcomes for the real thing, especially if they were never familiar with the events in the first place.
All that said, Dicaprio and Pitt are great. All the actors give spot on (if not all to brief) portrayals of their famous characters although I do take issue with how Bruce Lee is portrayed in terms of attitude but voice and mannerism is uncanny.
Many other writer/directors have taken huge liberties with portrayals of historical events, putting in purely fictional sequences and very "alternative" sequences. Usually though, the overall story remains intact ... or... like in Inglorious Basterds, whose ending is pure fantasy (yet it somehow worked better than this).