What was the point?

Rating: 5/10 (15 August 2019)

In an era of never-ending franchises and superhero movies, watching something original, something that is pure film, is a breath of fresh air. It is also a rarity. However, if being original is throwing 100 ideas into a blender and releasing the mess for the audience's privilege, then I'd stick with the never-ending MCU movies.
Honestly, throw in a buddy comedy element, the washed-up has-been actor wanting to survive storyline, obnoxious closeups of dirty feet, lots and lots (and LOTS) of driving, an old Hollywood backdrop and a bit of violence, and you get '"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood".
What compelled me to give it five stars is the admittedly good acting, the chemistry between the two leads, the beautiful cinematography and some genuinely funny individual moments, all which qualified for some form of entertainment.
However, the rest of the movie is a bizarre piece of wishful thinking, that is not at all relevant to the main characters.
Margot Robbie was good with the very little that she was given, but her character could not have been more pointless, due to the ending where history has been changed and no harm came to her.
There was honestly no point to the whole story, and while I appreciate films that try to do something new, at least have a coherent story that goes somewhere. This does not. Random appearances of big names like Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Luke Perry, Dakota Fanning, etc. just add to the weirdness of the whole movie, and the pointlessness as well.
Way too much time is wasted while the DiCaprio character is scene shooting some cheap cowboy show, and the film easily could have been a lot shorter, but Tarantino insists on taking his time in showing us...nothing.
The violence at the end was rather fun to watch, but the entire movie leading up to it was meaningless.
I can almost guarantee that, if not for the name of Tarantino and the glamour of the stars, this movie would have been crapped on all over.