Pretty at times but mostly superficial and devious

Rating: 4/10 (10 January 2006)

This is worth seeing 1-2 times as it was fresh and innovative when it came out 10+ years ago. Tarantino certainly can write terrific dialogue. Walken, Roth and a couple of others are good. There are some beautiful scenes eg. the dance contest.
By the time he got to Pulp Fiction, Tarantino had become self-conscious and, more important, had fooled himself into thinking that he had something deep to convey.
Pulp Fiction is all hip and clever and fast and cool. It - any Tarantino movie really - laughs at movie conventions, characters, plots, story lines, scenes, and acting itself. In this he's following Burt Reynolds, who parodied his own roles and laughed at his own movies until he himself became a joke.
When you watch Pulp Fiction you either buy into it or you don't. If you buy in, it's probably awesome (or at least better than the Kill Bill cr*p). But if you stand back a little bit it's just Hollywood behind an ultra-hip mask and like TV: slick & glossy but paper thin.
After hearing much about this, we saw it not long after it came out. Easily the biggest disappointment ever in actual:hype ratio. This movie should rate 6/10 but is downgraded because of raised expectations.
In complaining about it, a friend explained that to truly appreciate Pulp Fiction you had to understand that the briefcase contained Marsellus Wallace's soul, and that Jackson was an angel, and various other important insights.
That's it then: as with any great movie, it just needed to be explained.