Review of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) by Mattyice — 20 Aug 2019

While filmed with great care, acted with fantastic results (from Pitt and especially DiCaprio), and features a very fun (albeit controversial) ending, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a very mixed bag for the historically successful Tarantino.

First off, its themes contrasting the glitz and glamor with the squalor and instability of Los Angeles have been done to death, although the character exploration of DiCaprio's Rick Dalton is pretty great.

Furthermore, the film has no sense of direction, as the film goes from place to place with little flow or moments of impact usually found in Tarantino's films, making the overall film feel uneventful and boring.

Finally, and most glaringly of all, Tarantino is at his most self-indulgent in this film. The film/actor nods, in-jokes, and references are solely done to serve his own ego and admiration of vintage Hollywood.

The extremely stretched out dialogue and pointless scenes serve to be solely stroke his ego and throw ineffective character moments at the audience. This adds up to a painful 2 hour 40 minute run time that feels like it could've been cut down to 2 hours at least if not even shorter.

These three problems among others amount to a film that wanes in comparison to the rest of Tarantino's masterpieces.