Why 161 minutes?

Rating: 5/10 (27 November 2019)

I can't deny it ... I'm an avid Quentin Tarantino admirer, and I will probably always remain an avid Quentin Tarantino admirer. The man simply is a genius when it comes down to writing dazzling dialogues, getting the most out of stellar ensemble casts and depicting extreme but delirious violence. QT also always was the only director of whom I tolerated exaggeratedly long movies. "Pulp Fiction", "Kill Bill", "Inglorious Bastards", etc, it never bothered me that they lasted two and a half hours. But since, say, "Django Unchained", I'm noticing an increasingly worrying trend when I watch his newest movies. They are getting too long and far too tedious. They are generally still fine films, but when re-watching, I find myself fast-forwarding the overlong dialogues and only focusing on the violent parts. In case of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", I'm afraid I'll be skipping the full first two hours!
It's interesting to watch once, perhaps, but the fan-boy fantasy tale of "Hollywood in the Sixties" that Tarantino penned down is honestly quite dull, repetitive and substantially void. It's literally just endlessly long sequences of Leonardi DiCaprio (a washed-up TV-western idol from the 50s) rehearsing his lines for a new show, Brad Pitt (an unemployed stunt double) feeding his dog and cruising around LA to pick up young hippie girls, and Margot Robbie (as Sharon Tate) parading around town and looking at herself on the big screen. You probably read it before in other reviews, but it's a sad truth: absolutely nothing interesting happens, and some sequences - notably when Brad Pitt "trespasses" into the hippie trailer park - are even downright pathetic. The last forty minutes are fabulous, though. You may regain consciousness as soon as you see the message "6 months later" appear on the screen. As an enormous fan of Italian exploitation of the sixties & seventies, I really adored how Tarantino sent DiCaprio's actor character to Rome and star in exhilarating trash titles like "Nebraska Jim", "Shoot Ringo, said the Gringo" or "Operazione Dyn-O-Mite!". When returning to their home in the Hollywood Hills, they are confronted with members of the notorious Manson Family that are out to kill Sharon Tate and her friends, but Quentin Tarantino gives history a sort of absurdly cool twist. The climax isn't so surprising or innovative if you have seen "Inglourious Bastards", but at least it finally provides the movie with what I had desperately been anticipating for more than two hours: sick, extreme and unhinged violence!