Inglourious Basterds

Whew. Thank God I did download that one and not spend money on it. If you're trying to poke fun (or be satirical) at the Nazis, do it like Chaplin, or do it like Monty Python. Inglourious Basterds is just not funny and hasn't got enough substance to be satire. It's just fooling around by people with too big an ego and too much money. I'm extremely disappointed with Tarantino here; I liked his other movies and had expected quite a bit more here. I'm not surprised to see Brad Pitt in such a movie (he's not a bad actor, but I've always had the impression that he's not picky about the roles he's playing), and Uma Thurman gets bonus points for not appearing :-)

It just occurs to me that as well as completely missing the mark with the plot here, Tarantino also utterly fails at assembling a gripping soundtrack. Coincidence? If we ignore all this, the film is at least well made, and most of the actors show a good performance (I particularly “like” Christoph Waltz being the complete asshole.)

(On second thought: now, he didn't miss the mark with the plot, but with the way he's been filming it. Use the same plot but do it as a slapstick comedy, I think it could have been really funny. Use the same basic plot but take it seriously, it might have been a real thrilling war movie. Etc. So the plot is not to blame.)