Nothing glorious about ‘Basterds’ (.5/5)

Inglourious Basterds

Starring: Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Rating: R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality.
Running time: 2 hours, 23 minutes.

I’m usually known for liking more movies than any one person should.

I try to stay positive and watch movies with an angle of wanting to enjoy it, not wanting to criticize it.

But, I’ll tell you, “Inglourious Basterds” is a horrible, horrible movie.

I am not a Quentin Tarantino fan. I loathed “Kill Bill.” But I am a believer in second chances.

Maybe I shouldn’t be.

I went into “Inglourious Basterds” already a little miffed about the spelling (don’t even get me started on people who encourage bad grammar for no reason ...) but intrigued by what I thought was going to be the premise.

If you’re like me, you might have thought the movie was about a team of Jewish soldiers (the titled Basterds) attempting to kill Hitler.

Well, you’d be half right.

But as for the other half? It drags the interesting part about these soldiers so far down into a muddy hole that they would never be able to climb out.

Most of the torturous 2-and-a-half-hour runtime is spent with people sitting at tables and talking.

And talking.

And talking.

And then you find out that none of their talking really mattered anyway.

In between these excessively pointless and overstretched periods of conversation are sporadic gunfights, scalpings and even more talking.

Amazing, though, that with all this talking, you won’t remember any of the Basterds. You might remember a few key things after thinking about it, but they never get a chance to distinguish themselves. In 2 and a half hours. The only one you’re sure to remember is Brad Pitt as their leader, Lieutenant Aldo Raine, and that’s only because he’s Brad Pitt. Otherwise you would only remember him as that guy with the twang.

Raine and his crew of vengeful Jews seem more like footnotes than the main cast.

The other storyline? Barely worth mentioning even though it takes over half the film to unfold. The only good thing about that part is there are fewer characters to talk.

But the true main character of the movie is Tarantino himself. Rather than letting the movie grow and change organically, he forces it into the dreadfully prolonged exchanges that are there to make you think this paper-thin plot has any real depth.

It doesn’t.

From a director whose last decent work was in 1994 (“Pulp Fiction”), you’d think Tarantino would actually start to care about what he does.

But the fact that a majority of the characters were created for no other reason than to insert Tarantino’s pals makes me think that he doesn’t really care about the end result, he’s just having fun.
And that’s all well and good, but don’t subject us to it.

I am absolutely befuddled as to the high critical ratings. I don’t know what movie they were watching, but don’t be fooled, it wasn’t the same one I saw.

The ONLY reason to watch “Inglourious Basterds” is for the rare appearance of Brad Pitt, and, for fans of “The Office,” B.J. Novak. Otherwise, take this film off your Netflix list while you still have a chance.

.5 of 5 stars