Are we supposed to be laughing?

Rating: 5/10 (29 April 2010)

If Pulp Fiction were meant to be a comedy I'd be tempted to give it 7/10 for sheer effort. It's got John Travolta in a wig (check out that ponytail!) Uma Thurman pretending to be a dancer, and Mr Quentin Tarantino himself in yet another cameo trying to prove he can act, and proving beyond all doubt that he can't.
Amid the farce and supposedly knowing humour of this film there is one shining light. The performance of Samuel L Jackson as a hit-man stands out as one of the performances of the 1990s. It's a shame the director got his hit men mixed up and put Travolta at the heart of this film; with Jackson front and centre this could have been a first-rate crime drama, with the added intrigue of a man atoning for some truly wicked sins.
Travolta is miscast as Vincent. He plays a hit-man who talks about hamburgers on the way to murdering his victims. Not because this is what hit men do, but because Tarantino is so desperate to be seen as cool his hit men simply MUST do something different.
It gets worse. Vincent is assigned to look after his boss's wife and duly ends up on the dance floor. Quite why this is supposed to be so iconic I have absolutely no idea. John Travolta moves like a bored polar bear at times, and Uma Thurman may as well be on heavy medication for all the good she is. Rarely do you have sympathy for Hollywood superstars, but watching these two I did wonder whether the pair of them might consider early retirement. If nothing else, I guess this scene offers a cautionary warning to anyone fond of a hamburger; eat too many of 'em and you too could end up like John Travolta.
Throw in Bruce Willis as a disillusioned boxer, Harvey Keitel as Wolf, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer as a pair of hold-up artists, and, well, you've got a film not a million miles away from a Robert Altman picture of the Seventies. Or indeed a John Cassavetes film.
This is my problem with Tarantino; you watch his films and wonder if you've seen it somewhere before. Reservoir Dogs was a deserved success - critically, at least - but with Pulp Fiction we've been here before many times.
Its rating on this website suggests it is up there with The Godfather, and that, frankly, is the biggest laugh of the lot. Come to think of it, maybe I was right all along; maybe it IS a comedy after all.