Gets Everything Right Except An Overall Point

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2019)

In watching the trailers for Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood, they promise an incredible period piece set in 1960s Hollywood. If that is your primary reason for watching, this film may just speak to your very soul. If you want a deeper story with more of a point to it, however, you might leave this experience feeling somewhat disappointed.
Ostensibly, this movie tells two concurrent stories that eventually overlap with each other: Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an aging former Western star who is struggling to get acting work and stay relevant. The same goes for his stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who chauffeurs him around and is somewhat of a confidant. At the same time, young actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) is experiencing a rapid climb to LA success. As I said, eventually these plotlines converge when the Manson Clan begins to factor more heavily into the story.
In terms of aesthetic, Once Upon A Time... absolutely hits it out of the park. The music of the time provides an incredible soundtrack, the cinematography is impressive (as per the usual Tarantino style), and the entire experience convincingly plops the viewer into "Old Hollywood". The actors all nail their parts (with a star-studded cast like this, how could they not?!) and during the entire 160 minute runtime there is a good mix of drama, comedy, and action/adventure. A special shout-out needs to go to Margaret Qualley, whose hippy/cult character utterly commands every scene she is in.
The main problem I had with the movie, though, was that it didn't seem to have much of a point or purpose from beginning to end. There is so much going on from scene to scene that viewers will likely not be bored, per se, but there seems to be an ephemeral approach to the overall goals of the picture. It just sort of drifts from plot to plot, with the aesthetics filling in the gaps instead of well-crafted, plot-driven writing.
In fact, I would argue it commits a rather cardinal sin of assuming the audience knows the story behind some of its true-to-life figures (such as Ms. Tate). Because director Tarantino often plays with or subverts the expectations of the history books, there is a heavy degree of assumption that audiences will know "the facts" of what actually happened to these historical figures. I did not know this information, and thus was rather confused by some of the in-film events taking place (especially the ending). Now that I've done a little post-credits research I understand better what Tarantino was trying to accomplish, but during the watching experience I often found myself lost.
Overall, I can say I was entertained by Once Upon A Time... but little more. It was fun to see such star acting power all grouped together, and Tarantino is good enough at his craft to make sure it doesn't completely fall apart, but there was a lot here that I just couldn't relate to because it assumed a modicum of knowledge that I did not possess. Maybe I'm the outlier here and others will follow along better than me, but for the under-40 set I feel like it might be a challenge without a history brush-up.