wildyams

I didn't see "Kill Bill" this weekend, and as of now its not only the only movie by Quentin Tarantino that I haven't seen in theaters, but its the only one I really have had no interest in seeing. Its ranking pretty high on the tomatometer over at RottenTomatoes.com, and yet in reading through a bunch of the reviews (both good and bad), it just does not sound like my kind of movie. To begin with, evidently its very heavy into kung-fu, wirework fight scenes, samurai movies, and even anime; none of which I am a fan of at all. While I do like fighting in movies (or as Steve-o would say: "pushing and shoving"), and I do like films with an interesting style, or that just look cool or whatever, I do like it to all be because the story drives that, not the other way around. Most people I usually talk movies with would say the same thing, saying flashy special effects and intricate fight sequences really work best when there is a reason they are fighting in the first place. From all accounts, that is not the case with "Kill Bill", even from the reviews of people who loved the movie. Check out what Roger Ebert, who gave a "rave review" and 4 stars to the movie said in his review:

The movie is all storytelling and no story. The motivations have no psychological depth or resonance, but are simply plot markers. The characters consist of their characteristics.

While the people who really hated it called it "self-indulgent" or even "masturbatory", there was one legitimate complaint I read about which does sound pretty irritating:

Quentin Tarantino fans have been waiting six long years for the release of the director's follow-up to Jackie Brown. So what do they get for their patience? An incomplete movie, artlessly cleft in the middle. Cinema interruptus. A film whose editing and inelegant structure have been severely compromised by the avarice of the Miramax head honchos, who believe they can wring more money from viewers by splitting Kill Bill into two pieces and double-charging everyone.

So that is everything on the negative side, and that's stuff I didn't really take too much into account when deciding if I wanted to see the movie or not. The real reason I wasn't interested was because of the stuff that all the people who loved it raved about: that it was hot girls in hot outfits brandishing samurai swords and kicking the ass of everything in sight. To me this smacked a little too much of "Charlies Angels" or "Romeo Must Die" or something in that vein. My main question was what the hell was Quentin Tarantino doing mixed up in the middle of that kind of nonsense? Now I know that Tarantino is a huge fan of the movies that inspired things like "Charlies Angels" and has probably been a huge fan his whole life, and no doubt has done an infinitely better job bringing the stuff about those movies that he loved to the general public, but my question was really: if I wasn't a fan of those movies to begin with, why would I want to see a tribute to them?

On top of that, I felt like this seemed an awful lot like Kevin Smith's equally-masturbatory "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back", where the film geek-turned big time director is given free reign to make their own contribution to their favorite corner of fanboy heaven: Kevin Smith wanted to work with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, Quentin Tarantino wanted to work with Sonny Chiba and David Carradine. While I was excited to see "Jay and Silent Bob" (probably because Kevin Smith's interests are closer to mine than Tarantino's, what with Star Wars and Scooby-Doo and that ilk actually being things I watched as a kid, unlike the entire genre of kung-fu martial arts films), I realized after I saw it that it was really a big masturbation session for Kevin Smith that I paid money to see. Now don't get me wrong, I would say that I have enjoyed Quentin Tarantino's movies far more than Kevin Smith's, but they're really not all too different in where the filmmakers are coming from, with them both being fanboys who made it big. But odds are if Tarantino had done something like Kevin Smith with a kind of tying-his-own-movies-together kinda schtick, then I would have been more into it, because at least I've seen his movies, while I haven't seen any of the stuff he's referencing in "Kill Bill."

I don't want anyone to think that I was or am flatly refusing to see "Kill Bill." I think Tarantino has at the very least earned enough respect from me to not just completely dismiss something he did without ever having seen it. I do plan on seeing it (although I don't know if I'll go to theaters to see it or not), but I just wasn't really compelled to race out and see it like I probably would have been a couple years ago. I figured I would wait and hear what people said about it, and if it sounded like I was really missing out, then I would go see it. However, I've only talked to two people who saw it, and one told me that he loved it, but if I wasn't a big fan of kung-fu type movies, then it might not be for me; and the other one told me it was good, but it was kind of messy in that it seemed to run on a bit too long in parts and that the fact that the movie abruptly stops in the middle of the story is really jarring. I guess I'm mainly writing this to get more opinions on the movie from people who are not film critics to see if its really worth going to see in theaters or not. Anyone have anything good or bad to say about it?

PS - I know this entry is probably so long that nobody made it this far. Sorry bout that.