Super Frat

Quentin Tarantino’s obsession with 70’s B-movies is beginning to wear thin and one has to wonder if even Quentin understands why and how they were made.  Like a lot of low budget movies, the original Inglorious Bastards probably had a lot of characters sitting around or running through the woods because that’s cheap to shoot, not because it’s necessarily interesting.

That isn’t to say there aren’t interesting characters in this movie, there are.  Brad Pitt’s Lt. Raine is fun as is war hero, Frederrick Zoeller and the “Nazi detective”, Landa.  But if Tarantino has a message here, it’s beyond me and the story just seems to be a rambling series of events and scenes that don’t quite come together in the end.

I saw the movie with a group of drunk college kids and they cheered the over-the-top violence, but were antsy in their seats during the long stretches of non-violence.  The movie is sort of like a guy convincing you to come with him on a long and interesting journey and driving you only a block and saying, “See?  Wasn’t that interesting?”

Inglorious Basterds needed fewer characters and more of a plot or a point.  It probably would’ve worked much better as a 30 minute movie, rather than a 2+ hour epic.  And the odd choice of alternate historical ending seems to take the wind out the sails of the characters rather than enhance the movie.  Still wondering what the point was.  Maybe the DVD will be better with some kind of explanation of what’s going on in Quentin’s head.  That’s probably a bad thing, as I seemed more concerned about the decision of the director than the decision of the characters.

I give Inglorious Basterds 4 keggers out of 10.