Don't believe it

In The Australian today, they extract some Tarantino love from The Times:

QUENTIN Tarantino swaggered back to the scene of his greatest triumph yesterday with a World War II revenge film that critics at the Cannes film festival greeted with relief and cheers. Innglourious Basterds, set in Nazi-occupied France, is a violent, occasionally funny love letter to cinema filmed in four languages and starring Brad Pitt.

Yet, as I can't stand Quentin Tarantino and his movies, I have been taking an interest in critical reaction. A Los Angeles Times blog (and that paper, if any, should have a reliable take on movie critics) notes that the film is being "spun" heavily, and the biggest critics are not so impressed:

...a highlight from the [The Guardian's] Peter Bradshaw review: "Quentin Tarantino's cod-WW2 schlocker about a Jewish-American revenge squad intent on killing Nazis in German-occupied France is awful. It is achtung-achtung-ach-mein-Gott atrocious."

The reviews keep coming in from all media outposts, with Variety mixed, the Hollywood Reporter largely negative and Time magazine's Richard and Mary Corliss declaring the movie "a misfire." My colleague Ken Turan, who was also at the screening, calls the film a "self-indulgent piece of violent alternate history."

Even the positive reviews in a few English papers have parts that indicate reservations that have perhaps been overcome as a result of the reviewer being a bit too excited at being in Cannes. For example, in The Independent it gets 4 stars but these comments:

The way the Germans are drawn is so broad that it makes the characterisations in Allo, Allo! seem restrained....

The violence is often extreme – the Jewish Nazi hunters have a habit of scalping their victims; one hunter likes to batter in his antagonist's head with a baseball bat; and a shoot-out in an underground bar is sheer bloody carnage – but it comes in bursts and has a comic book element about it.

Some will be offended, although it's hard to get too upset about a film made with such geekish enthusiasm.

And in The Times review (also giving it 4 stars) is this:

What’s difficult to square is the occasional Springtime for Hitler scenes, featuring an apoplectic Führer, with the darker corners of the film. The almost casual savagery perpetrated by Pitt and his German rival can occasionally look unnervingly out of place next to the lighter Mel Brooks-style moments.

Interestingly, in the comments that follow The Times review, there are many people wondering why reviewers seem to be in love with Tarantino. For example:

Despite what most critics will say about this, people are sick of Tarantino's formula of 1970's cultural references, inane dialogue about superheroes or old TV shows, gratuitous over-the-top violence, and ideas ripped off from Sergio Leone. He tries way too hard to be "cool", and it's annoying.

I am feeling reasonable satisfied there is enough negative talk out there (even within the positive reviews) that this film will not be seen as a critical or even commercial success.

(Although, sad to say, Tarantino fan boys will probably buy enough DVDs to let him make another movie.)