I did not like this movie. And it saddens me to say it, because I do love Tarantino, and his previous movies have always brought a tremendous amount of entertainment value, even if they can't all be masterpieces like Basterds. But I was legitimately bored throughout this film and even while writing this review am struggling to understand how it went so off the rails. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie, it boasts an all-star cast and is set in 1969 Hollywood. These are all the ingredients for a blockbuster but they are failed by a lackluster script, which is generally Tarantino's forte. His style is to set all the chess pieces on the board and build up to an epic finale, but this time, the showdown happens in the last fifteen minutes of the film, and nothing that leads up to it feels remotely coherent or interesting. Instead it feels like a series of disjointed vignettes about characters who aren't particularly compelling. And the finale features characters who get a gory comeuppance that you don't even feel like cheering for because they barely got any screen time previously. It's hard to root for a villain's demise when you've only know the villain for about ten minutes.
The dialogue wasn't crisp, and the banter was far from engaging. There were odd bits of voiceover narration that I found particularly jarring, because the hallmark of a Tarantino flick has always been to show, not tell. And yet it seemed clear that he kept writing himself into corners that only a narrator could fix. DiCaprio as a has-been Western actor has his funny moments but is ultimately striking one note throughout. Brad Pitt is a far more compelling screen presence (when he takes his shirt off, it was like an ode to Thelma and Louise that at least got me engaged in the proceedings for a few minutes before I was bored again). But his character is played for laughs, despite him allegedly killing his wife? What? Margot Robbie is also flawless as Sharon Tate, but her character mostly exists to play a tanned, leggy, blonde bombshell without much of an interior life. Sure, she goes into a theater and puts on large glasses to watch herself on screen, which seems to be the only way male filmmakers seem to know how to tell us a beautiful woman contains multitudes within. She wears big, unflattering glasses - she's complex!
Margaret Qualley is probably the most interesting character in the piece, a hippie called Pussycat who lives with the rest of the Manson family on the ranch. I do appreciate the attention to detail by allowing her to have robust armpit hair and have her look somewhat distressingly emaciated (though still gorgeous). Note to teenage girls and all-age men who think that's what a normal woman should look like - no. She is clearly starving and that thigh gap needs to go. But again, her character is a weird one-off who brings Brad Pitt back to the ranch but serves no real other purpose. She and Pitt do share great chemistry, and the scenes where they just communicate via facial expressions might be the highlight of the movie, but otherwise, she's yet another wasted actor in this film.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood features a great soundtrack, most of which you've already heard in the trailer, and is an ode to Westerns like many of Tarantino's latest endeavors, which means great cinematography of sweeping vistas and a general desert vibe. But there is a dearth of engaging content that makes it a complete slog to watch. The same gag is repeated too often, none of the characters feel fleshed out, and it all feels a bit too self-satisfied and assured of its own success to ever win you over. I will be quickly forgetting this movie (much like I forgot The Hateful Eight) and hope that Tarantino moves away from Westerns and goes back to killing Nazis. DiCaprio did get to wield a flamethrower in this movie, but it was too little, too late.
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