Review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Is a Tangled Mess That Never Really Fully Unties Itself

“Hey, Quentin! I just heard back from Margot Robbie’s manager and she’s in!”

“Well, great, but we’re all done shooting, dumbass.”

“But it’s MARGOT ROBBIE!”

“Ah, OK. We’ll find something for her to do.”

And that makes about as much sense as any other reason she’s in this movie.

There was a friend of a friend who kept showing up to a poker night that I had at my house a while back. He was a Class A asshole. He would do things like pound a table full of chips, sending them flying everywhere, take a leak off our balcony, and take my housemate’s prairie dog out it’s cage and let it loose. And every time Keith or I had to clean up his mess – metaphorical or literal, our mutual friend would say “Well, that’s just Nate.” As if that excused his assholedness. This is how we talk about Quentin Tarantino. Well I, for one, am done letting him piss off my balcony.

I’m not saying he’s an asshole, but we tend to look the other way when he tosses in what would be called gratuitous violence if it was another director, or when he misspells the title of his movie just for fun. Because he’s a quirky guy, and we all love quirks! Like how Margot Robbie’s character had absolutely nothing to do with the movie and wasted a whole lot of film, but we got to see her feet. How adorably quirky!

Confession. I did not grow up in this time period and I do not know much about the subject matter. I don’t know if the title is a reference to a specific thing, or just an allusion to a story being told. I don’t know much about the Manson hippies. And I have no idea who Sharon Tate is. Sorry. But I have to assume that other people out there are in the same boat. So who is this movie made for? People over 55? Big mass murder historians? Or film critics and Academy voters?

There were parts I enjoyed. He really brought 1969 to life for the entirety of the movie. And Leo coming to terms with his fading stardom, particularly in the scene with the little girl. And I did appreciate seeing his character nail that one scene after bombing the other scene. But after 10 minutes of a movie within the movie, I had wished I went to the bathroom. Little did I know that the Sharon Tate storyline would never quite intersect with anything else and I really could have gone to the bathroom many times during the movie, as many scenes didn’t really add any value to the story.

I’m mostly left confused by the movie. Is this what he had hoped would have happened to the Manson hippies? Is he trying to illustrate the randomness and chance that goes into stardom, and maybe life in general? OK, I guess that’s cool. And why is Margot Robbie in this movie? Because it’s random and quirky? Well, it seems as though the Academy appreciated something about it. But now I’m left to clean up the prairie dog shit under my bed.

3/10
Dustin Fisher