ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD – a movie and values review by Gary Smolker

Is There Any Merit to this Movie?

Some people will say there is absolutely no merit to this Quentin Tarantino movie.

I disagree.

A Movie about Movie Stars

“Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” is a Quentin Tarantino movie about movie stars.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio plays a star in this movie whose career is on the decline.

He thinks he has become a has-been.

Arguably he has become a has been in this movie; but, he in this movie he is still getting parts in movies.

Now what could be more charming and ironical than Leonardo DiCaprio – perhaps the most popular and a very highly paid movie star today – playing the part of a has-been movie star?

If you have a sense of humor or a sense of irony, this is delightful.

Brad Pitt

In this movie, Brad Pitt plays the part of a gofer and movie-double.

He is Leonardo DiCaprio’s gofer and movie double.

He plays the part of movie-double when he can get to play the part.

Sometimes, his friend, Leonardo DiCaprio intervenes to get him the part of movie-double.

In real life, Brad Pitt is a highly paid highly active highly popular movie star whose “real life” and “success” and “tribulations” are constantly broadcast to the public.

He is constantly in the public’s eye.

In real life, Brad Pitt is nobody’s gofer or movie-double.

Worldliness

The characters played by both DiCaprio and Pitt are worldly men.

Throughout the movie, the characters they play sagely and realistically face dramatic heart rendering real life situations.

Sex and Violence

In this movie, Quentin Tarantino makes fun of the sex and violence portrayed in other people’s movies.

In one violent scene, DiCaprio uses a flame thrower to burn a woman to a crisp who has been trying to kill him with a knife, after she lands in his swimming pool while pursuing him.

Although the scene is outlandish, it flows seamlessly as part of a story being told in this movie.

The story being told when this scene occurs in this movie, actually the story being made fun of in this part of the movie, is the Sharon Tate murder by Charlie Manson followers at Roman Polanski’s home.

In this movie, DiCaprio’s home is next to Polanski’s home in the Hollywood Hills.

Instead of Charlie Manson’s gang murdering Sharon Tate, the way Tarantino tells this story Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt kill the bad guys – the Manson gang members – when they come to murder everyone in Leonardo DiCaprio’s home.

The violence in the scenes of attempted murder by the Manson gang are extremely fantastic – they are so extremely fantastic they have the same effect on an audience as slap stick comedy.

QUENTIN TARANTINO’S GENIUS TREATMENT OF VIOLENCE

The violence portrayed in this movie’s fictionalized reenactment of the Sharon Tate murder by the Charlie Manson gang is so hideous it converts in the mind to slap stick comedy.

QUENTIN TARANTINO’S GENIUS TREATMENT OF SEX

This movie takes place while the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States was taking place.

In this movie, Tarantino makes fun of the highly publicized spread of sexual liberty, the existence of flower children, free sex being available in communes… communities living together with loose morals.

In one scene, Brad Pitt picks up a young girl hitch hiking to a ranch.

He agrees to take her to a ranch where she is living with many other young sexually uninhibited girls.

On the ride to the ranch, the hitch hiking young girl asks Pritt if she can have sex with him while he is driving his car.

Pitt  asks her how old she is.

She replies, “18.”

Pitt responds, “Do you have any proof that you are 18?”

She responds,

“No, I don’t have proof I am 18 years old.

“Don’t you want to have sex with me?”

Pitt responds,

“It is a felony to have sex with a girl under the age of 18. 

“I don’t want to go to jail because I had sex with you.”

Roman Polanski

In real life, Roman Polanski was found guilty of having had sex with an under age woman during the time period portrayed in this movie.

Polanski flied the United States to avoid going to jail.

Quentin Tarantino Has Fun

Throughout the movie, Tarantino has fun poking fun at antisocial real life occurrences.

Copyright © 2019 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved