Thinking of seeing this movie? …DON’T!
Upon finally seeing Grindhouse-after a great deal of anticipation-on Monday, I find myself severely, though not unexpectedly, disappointed. And after watching “Death Proof” I think I may have to reconsider my list of the top three worst movies I’ve ever seen. “Planet Terror”, however, was quite enjoyable, and Rose McGowan was amazing. Alas, the quality half of Grindhouse is not the subject of my discussion here today.
[Spoiler Warning]
“Death Proof” is painfully slow. I know Quentin Tarantino has a near pathological fascination with convoluted plot digressions, but this movie is brimming over with more inane, meaningless dialogue than any of his films to date. At one point, I grew so disconcerted with the movie that I began to desperately wished for someone to scream ‘FIRE’ just to give me an excuse to stop watching this long-winded trash. For the first 40 minutes the movie follows one group of three main characters, then in what could almost be a non sequitur, given the nature of the movie up to this point, abruptly kills them all. No more, no less, bang, dead, end of story; oh but wait, there’s more…
The “plot” then up-roots itself from Austin, Texas, and inexplicably moves 800 miles east to Tennessee, and to a totally different cast of four brand new main characters consisting of -a quite stunning-Rosario Dawson, Xena’s stunt double, John McClain’s daughter, and some chick from Cold Case. The way the movie simply cuts off one story and starts another three states over it’s almost as if Tarantino combined a horrid quasi-slasher flick, and its equally tumultuous sequel into one, grade-A travesty of film. Celluloid around the world weeps at this movie.
If you thought one useless stream of never-ending dialogue was great, then this movie is the greatest thing to ever happen to you, but for us, the living, the movie in effect “starting itself over”, is tantamount to torture. Tomorrow, I’ll be calling The Hague to see if Quentin Tarantino can be brought up on charges of Crimes Against Humanity.
With even more pointless, not-so-witty banter and equally emotionless ‘round-table discussion, all invariably about what Tarantino assumes all women must talk about in every single conversation: men; the movie just keeps on sinking ever deeper in the the abyss. I simply cannot stress enough just how truly god-awful the dialogue in “Death Proof” is. Now don’t get me wrong, I am by no means saying this that this, or any other type of movie cannot be ably handled by a main cast of all women, but what I am saying, is that when it comes to dialogue for women, Tarantino has been measured, and been found wanting. And “Death Proof” isn’t the only film like this, the lines he writes for female rolls are superficial and mostly superfluous in his all his movies, even Kill Bill fails dramatically in the discourse department.
Tarantino doesn’t take the approach Rodriguez does, to make a fun, somewhat witty, part homage, part parody, part reinvention/revitalization of a classic-and campy-genre of movies predestined to be “bad”. He opted instead, to take the idea of all those things, this great idea for a 'new' movie and run with it…right off a cliff. He didn’t parody or make homage, he made a “me too” movie 40 years too late. He got self indulgent, to the point of pushing ahead with a work clearly not up anywhere near his past standards; doing nothing more than throwing half his bag of old tricks at it to make some kind of “this is a Tarantino film” statement, but not even the zombified bite of “Planet Terror” could reanimate “Death Proof's” DOA corpse.
My suggestion, go see "Planet Terror", and the clever fake previews in between, and as soon as the old "Feature Presentation" graphic goes up on screen, get the hell out of the theatre as fast as you can.