Grindhouse
Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, USA, 2007
Rating: 2.9

Former audio/visual club geeks everywhere rejoiced when Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez announced their plans for Grindhouse, a double-feature homage to exploitation flicks complete with missing reels and cheesy fake movie trailers. Now, on the surface, this seems like a really refreshing idea with quite a bit of potential. In reality, it, or more accurately, half of it, just misses the boat all together. 

Robert Rodriguez’s contribution, Planet Terror, tells the tale of a town infected by flesh-eating mutants. There’s Bruce Willis and Josh Brolin (looking exactly like his dad) and a smattering of other character actors sprinkled in for effect. Now, I can sit here and tell you all about what Planet Terror is supposed to be, but basically all roads lead back to Rose McGowan. She is what this film is all about. You want a tribute to exploitation films? If so, you just can’t go much better than closeups of Rose as a go-go dancer — and then later as a go-go dancer with an M16 (w/ grenade launcher) replacing a leg that was eaten by mutants. You see, Rodriguez understands what Grindhouse was supposed to be. He delivers with cheesy lines, hot women and over-the-top action and gore. He delivers the goods, contrary to what many other critics have suggested. Not only is his offering more true to the films to which he pays tribute, but he has Rose McGowan (did I mention her?). If nothing else, Rose is irrefutable proof of a supreme being, because nothing that gorgeous is created by accident without a divine hand at work. Okay, okay, the film, right. Planet Terror delivers on the fun factor in spades. It is camp at its finest.

On the other hand, Death Proof, Tarantino’s offering, actually succeeded in motivating me to rise from my seat and leave the theatre about 35 minutes into it. I just could not take anymore. I shall always remember it as the “No Mas” film, as my capacity for self-indulgent bullshit had redlined with surprising rapidity. While Grindhouse is supposed to be about camp and exploitation cinema, Death Proof batters the viewers with Tarantino’s idea of witty dialogue. Now, the banter in Pulp Fiction was superb. The wordplay in Reservoir Dogs was great. Here, Tarantino tries to insert that same type of “earthy” dialogue, but it just does not work, mainly because there is way too much of it. Now, in all fairness, the ending might have been great, but I’ll never know. Quite frankly, I really don’t even want to talk about Death Proof, and that’s a shame because I think Kurt Russell was great. If he had been allowed to do more as Stuntman Mike, maybe I would have stayed seated. Instead I was doused with dialogue that gave me just enough energy to overcome the force of gravity that held me to the theater seat.

Now, most people who voice a criticism of Death Proof are belittled as not “understanding” what was going on. In fact, one of the film’s producers suggested that Grindhouse didn’t do as well as expected because they did not “educate the South and Midwest markets.” Well, as long as you’re not arrogant about it boys. Educate? We get what’s going on here, chief! We understand what you attempted to do. Hell, we even thought it was a cool idea. But having a cool idea does not get it done. There’s still that little matter of making good on what you’re trying to do. Educate? I’m not the one who gave Tarantino free reign to make a self-indulgent piece of crap. Don’t start berating the moviegoing public because I refuse to believe it’s raining when you piss on my head.

Look, before this gets ugly, let me sum up Grindhouse for you: Planet Terror is a lot of fun, and Rose McGowan is off-the-charts fine. Maybe one day man will create a device to measure her hotness, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. Take what you can (Rodriguez’s offering) and leave the rest (anything Tarantino was allowed to do without intelligent supervision).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.