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The title of the ninth film by Quentin Tarantino , “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” is meant to recall Sergio Leone ’s masterpiece “ Once Upon a Time in the West .” It's a nod to the Western genre influence on Tarantino's latest—both structurally and in the actual plot—and the way movies about the Old West play with actual history. Just as the Western has often used real people and places as templates to tell fictional stories, Tarantino has crafted an elegiac ode to a time he’s only experienced through books and movies. Tarantino once said, “When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.’” And it’s that education by projector light that weaves its way through every frame of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” a movie only he could have devised. And yet this is not the film that hardcore fans of “ Pulp Fiction ” and “ Inglourious Basterds ” may be expecting. It’s somber at times in the way it seems to be trying to grab something just out of reach—the promised potential of the people on the fringe of the city of angels, an attempt to capture a mythical time when movies, real life, and imagination could intertwine.

The majority of “Once Upon” takes place on a February weekend in 1969, introducing us to its two leads, TV actor Rick Dalton ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) and his longtime stuntman and BFF Cliff Booth ( Brad Pitt ). Rick was the star of a hit Western show called “Bounty Law” but he’s struggling to figure out what’s next, keenly aware that his days of heroism are ending as he ages out of Hollywood—and he’s encouraged by a bigwig played by Al Pacino to go to Italy to reboot his career with spaghetti westerns. Cliff is way more laid-back, the kind of guy who loves his dog almost as much as he loves Rick and says what he means even to someone like Bruce Lee ( Mike Moh ), whom he actually fights in one of the film’s most crowd-pleasing scenes. Lee is only one of the familiar names in the film, as Tarantino populates the world around his fictional creations with real famous faces from Steve McQueen ( Damian Lewis ) to James Stacy ( Timothy Olyphant ).

Of course, as most people know, the real-life figures living next to Rick Dalton are the most controversial ones— Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ). Much has already been written about Robbie’s limited line total, and it’s because Tarantino doesn’t see Tate as much as a person as an idea—a glimpse of Hollywood’s optimistic happiness. Whether she’s dancing at a party at the Playboy mansion or sneaking in to watch herself at a public showing of “ The Wrecking Crew ,” she’s almost glowing every time she appears on-screen, a counter to Dalton’s increasing anxiety. And Tarantino knows that this presentation of a star we know will be snuffed out in the real world adds a sense of melancholy and dread to the entirety of the production, even when it’s not explicitly about Sharon Tate or the hippies out at Spahn Ranch.

The bulk of Tarantino’s film is designed to be a dreamy snapshot of the movie business and life in Hollywood in the late ‘60s. We get dozens of shots of Cliff driving Rick around town, really just to show off the amazing production design, classic cars, and music choices on the radio. The approach by Tarantino and master cinematographer Robert Richardson is incredibly finely tuned, and yet the film never loses that dreamlike aesthetic for the sake of realism—we’re watching a movie not so much about an era but about the movies of that era. It’s a setting once-removed from reality, capturing a time through the way celebrity culture and movies defined it more than the historians. It’s a captivating movie just to live in, complete with long dialogue scenes that some QT fans will say lack the pop and zip of his most playful work but feel more in tune with his character-driven scenes in something like “ Jackie Brown .”

Most of all, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” is the first Tarantino film to feel like the product of an older director. Tarantino was the problem child of Hollywood for years, redefining the industry at such a young age, but “OUATIH” could not have been made by the ‘90s Tarantino (or, at least, it would have been a very different and much worse movie). One can see Tarantino reflected in Dalton, someone looking back at their career and wondering what’s next, still able to get excited by the fact that he lives next to the director of “ Rosemary’s Baby ” but also welling up over a book he’s reading about a fading hero because he sees himself in it. 

DiCaprio proves to be such a perfect choice for Dalton that one can’t really imagine anyone else in the part. He’s always had classic Hollywood charisma, but he imbues Dalton with that poignant mix of longing and fading optimism that often comes with aging—sure, he loves his life and hanging with his buddy but he’s nervous when he thinks about what’s next, wondering if he hasn’t missed out on something forever. It’s one of his best performances, although he’s arguably topped by a fantastic Pitt, who gets a part from his “Basterds” director that reminds viewers how wonderful he can be in the right material. He hasn’t been this playful and charismatic in years. 

A lot of people are going to focus on the end of “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” The minute that we see that the film has jumped forward to August of 1969 and that Sharon Tate is very pregnant, anyone with even a passing knowledge of history knows what’s coming. Or at least they think they do. The final few scenes will be among the most divisive of the year, and I’m still rolling around their effectiveness in my own critical brain. Without spoiling anything, I’m haunted by the final image, taken from high above its characters, almost as if Tarantino himself is the puppet master saying goodbye to his creations, all co-existing in a vision of blurred reality and fiction. However, the violence that precedes it threatens to pull the entire film apart (and will for some people). Although that may be the point—the destruction of the Tinseltown dream that casts this blend of fictional and real characters back into Hollywood lore.

I do know this for sure—I can’t wait to see this film again. It’s so layered and ambitious, the product of a confident filmmaker working with collaborators completely in tune with his vision. Every piece fits. Every choice is carefully considered. Whether it all adds up to something is now up for audiences to decide, but this is a film that feels like it’s not going away anytime soon. It’s one of those rare movies that will provoke conversation and debate long enough to cement itself in the public consciousness more than the fleeting multiplex hit of the week. Love it or hate it, people will be talking about it. And that’s something the older Tarantino has in common with the younger one. He hasn’t lost any of his power to fire people up. If only there were more like him. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (2019)

Rated R for language throughout, some strong graphic violence, drug use, and sexual references.

161 minutes

Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton

Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate

Al Pacino as Marvin Schwarzs

Kurt Russell as Randy

Timothy Olyphant as James Stacy

Dakota Fanning as Squeaky Fromme

Luke Perry as Scott Lancer

Margaret Qualley as Pussycat

Damon Herriman as Charles Manson

Mike Moh as Bruce Lee

Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring

Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen

Bruce Dern as George Spahn

• Quentin Tarantino

Cinematographer

• Robert Richardson
• Fred Raskin

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• <em>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</em> Is One of Quentin Tarantino’s Most Affectionate Films. It’s Also One of His Best

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Is One of Quentin Tarantino’s Most Affectionate Films. It’s Also One of His Best

H ow you respond to Quentin Tarantino’s dazzling elegiac fairytale Once Upon a Time in Hollywood may depend on how much you like old guys, people who see how the changing of the guard is leaving them behind, who are beginning to reckon with the ways their bodies will betray them, who have seen their profession change so much that they can barely keep a toehold in it. You’ll also need some affection for Los Angeles, past and present, for the way, unlike other American cities, it keeps its ghosts around for a long, long time: They’re poured into martini glasses at Musso & Frank, or they rush like a traveling breeze alongside the mosaic tiles of LAX’s Terminal 3. You don’t have to remember every television show— Mann ix, The FBI , Bonanza , The Green Hornet —from 1969, when the film is set. Just recognize that pop culture used to be a very different creature: In the old days it didn’t come to you, parceled out in personalized packets via earbuds; you had to come to it , yielding first to its time slot and then to its charms. That, or wait for the rerun.

It also helps to have some feeling for the tragedy of one fledgling movie star who was murdered almost before anyone could get to know her name: Sharon Tate , the pregnant wife of Roman Polanski, was stabbed to death in Benedict Canyon by members of the Manson family on August 8, 1969, along with three friends, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, aspiring screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski and coffee-fortune heiress Abigail Folger. (Polanski was in London working on a film.) Tate had done some TV and a handful of movies at the time of her death; as an actor, she was winsome and elegant at once—her beauty was delicate without being fragile, and she seemed to have a sense of humor about how unreally gorgeous she was. The career she didn’t have is itself a kind of ghost, and you can occasionally feel it rustling through Tarantino’s movie: It is, above all, a Valentine to her.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Tarantino’s most affectionate movie since Jackie Brown (1997), the picture that remains—the idolatry surrounding Pulp Fiction notwithstanding—his masterpiece. Tarantino is at his best when he’s motivated by affection, and for that reason, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ranks among his finest; the serrated bitterness of his last picture, The Hateful Eight, has vanished. This is a tender, rapturous film, both joyous and melancholy, a reverie for a lost past and a door that opens to myriad imagined possibilities. Like all of Tarantino’s movies, it’s filled with references you may or may not get: There are woolly, rambunctious Jack Davis caricatures from MAD magazine, nods to blond dream girls like Joey Heatherton and Anne Francis, allusions to the brutally electric spaghetti westerns of Sergio Corbucci. But what you don’t recognize, you can Google; new worlds await. This is a welcoming picture, not an alienating one, an open door into a vanished world that still feels vital.

You could also look at it as Tarantino’s own Wild Bunch, a story of outmoded gunslingers getting their last blast of glory. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt play Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, a fading TV star and his longtime stunt double, two aging guys who have practically grown up together. They were in clover when Rick was a ’50s TV star, on a western series with a jaunty horse-trot of a title, “Bounty Law.” But those days are gone, and Rick has been relegated to playing the heavy in random TV episodes. There’s not much for Cliff to do but to drive Rick around and keep him company, though if he occasionally shows glimmers of resentment toward his more famous pal, the loyalty between the two is unshakable. (Cliff, as the movie’s unseen narrator puts it, is “more than a brother and a little less than a wife” to Rick.)

Cliff is also the more well-adjusted of the two, even though he has less money and less status than his TV-star friend. Rick lives in a comfortably appointed house on Cielo Drive—his new neighbors, renting the house next door, are newlyweds Tate and Polanski. Cliff lives in a disheveled trailer with a pit bull named Brandy, a sweetie-pie with a satin-gold coat and jaws of steel. But while Rick is rattled by insecurity over no longer being a leading man—he cries in gratitude when a pint-sized but ineffably wise young actor compliments him on a brief scene—Cliff takes everything in stride. He tools around the city and its environs, wearing a Hawaiian shirt as if it were a tuxedo—all of his class comes from the inside. He keeps seeing the same hippie girl around town, an underage cutie in tiny cutoff shorts and an even tinier crocheted top, a fringed suede bag swinging around her hips. She’s always hitchhiking, and one day, he offers her a lift. This strange, zonked-out girl (her name is Pussycat, and she’s played by Margaret Qualley), is part of the new generation that’s taking over Rick and Cliff’s world like a pernicious weed. She asks him to take him to Spahn Movie Ranch, a site formerly used in the making of movie and TV westerns. Now it’s a commune headed by charismatic sicko Charles Manson. Cliff doesn’t yet know that, but he remembers the ranch from its earlier days. The old world has merged with a new, more sinister one.

Throughout Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, fiction and fact meet; sometimes they criss-cross and hurtle in opposite directions. But the setting always feels bracingly real: Tarantino’s 1969 Los Angeles is a dreamland of multi-hued bar and restaurant signs—in a lovely sequence, they blink on one by one at twilight, just as actors all around town are leaving their jobs for the day and moving toward that beckoning after-work drink. (The film, every frame of it stunning, was shot by veteran cinematographer and Tarantino regular Robert Richardson.) As the story’s mood turns dark, the recording of “California Dreamin’” you hear on the soundtrack isn’t the Mamas and the Papas’ creamy, sunset-flavored version, but a more foreboding one by José Feliciano, the sound of vultures circling. There are moments in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that are purely terrifying. The movie’s tone shifts drastically during the finale, a sequence marked by ruthless, cartoonishly orchestrated violence—somehow it doesn’t fit, almost jolting the picture out of whack. But the movie’s final moment sets everything right, gently, a grace note of serenity in the context of an all-too-mad reality.

Pitt and DiCaprio are marvelous together, and though neither are what any of us should call “old,” their faces, once as flawless as airbrushed high-school portraits, have now achieved a more weathered perfection. DiCaprio’s Rick looks mischievously boyish, though you can’t help noticing the tiny crow’s feet marking the skin around his eyes, etched there by dried-up work and dwindling bank accounts—there’s an alluring, Robert Ryan-style weariness about him. And Pitt is superb, striding through the movie with the offhanded confidence of a mountain lion who knows his turf. This is swagger freed from self-consciousness; Cliff was groovy before the word was invented.

But Once Upon a Time in Hollywood really belongs to one person, a figure who gets less screen time than either of the male leads but who fills the movie with light even so. Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate, and in the movie’s most stunning sequence—set sometime in February 1969—she comes upon a theater, the Bruin, that’s showing her most recent film, The Wrecking Crew, one of those absurd Matt Helm spy joints starring Dean Martin. She goes up to the box-office booth to buy a ticket—and then it occurs to her that if she explains to the ticket girl that she’s actually in the film, she might be able to get in for free.

It works! She slips on a pair of oversized, owlish eyeglasses and sits down to watch her own image flash on the screen. There’s no vanity or self-congratulation in her expression, only curiosity and an almost mystical kind of fascination, as if she were observing a deer in the forest. She waits to see if the audience laughs at one of her funnier lines—they do. She mimics the martial-arts movies her character executes on-screen, her hands slashing and dipping through the air, her muscles remembering what it was like to learn the routine. Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate is watching, as we are, the real-life Sharon Tate playing a character in a movie. But for us, the two have blended into one person, a young woman, recently married—does she even yet know she’s pregnant?—who has everything to look forward to. In real life, no one could save Sharon Tate. With Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino and Robbie restore life to her. The magic spell lasts only a few hours. But no one has ever brought her closer to a happily ever after.

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‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Review: We Lost It at the Movies

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt star as midlevel entertainment industry workers whose relationship forms the core of Quentin Tarantino’s look at the movie past.

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By A.O. Scott

There is a lot of love in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” and quite a bit to enjoy. The screen is crowded with signs of Quentin Tarantino’s well-established ardor — for the movies and television shows of the decades after World War II; for the vernacular architecture, commercial signage and famous restaurants of Los Angeles; for the female foot and the male jawline; for vintage clothes and cars and cigarettes. But the mood in this, his ninth feature, is for the most part affectionate rather than obsessive.

Don’t get me wrong. Tarantino is still practicing a cinema of saturation, demanding the audience’s total attention and bombarding us with allusions, visual jokes, flights of profane eloquence, daubs of throwaway beauty and gobs of premeditated gore. And yet “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” whose title evokes bedtime stories as well as a pair of Sergio Leone masterpieces, is Tarantino’s most relaxed movie by far, both because of its ambling, shaggy-dog structure and the easygoing rhythm of its scenes.

Though trouble percolates on the horizon and mayhem arrives in the final act, this is fundamentally a hangout movie, a bad-guys-come-to-town western more like “Rio Bravo” than “High Noon.” Above all, it’s a buddy picture about two middle-level entertainment industry workers doing their jobs and making the scene over a few hectic, sunny days in 1969.

The friendship between Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) functions for Tarantino as both keystone and key. It’s an organizing principle and a source of meaning, and a major reason that “Once Upon a Time” is more than a baby-boomer edition of Trivial Pursuit brought to life.

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Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood Reviews

It’s still a Tarantino film at heart, but, through the questions he seems to be asking himself, it feels like it was made by someone who has been shaped by age and experience as well.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 14, 2024

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood just might be Tarantino's masterpiece.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2024

The film analyzes the functioning of entertainment industry, the social and ideological ethnic resentments and the construction of the American Dream. Tarantino carries out a kind of historical and cultural revisionism with the aim of rewriting the facts.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 27, 2024

Its alternate ending to real-life events is meant to be controversial, but for me, it’s a vision of how everything should have happened if the world was fair or, indeed, a fairy tale… in Hollywood.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 24, 2023

For film nerds like myself, watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is like being treated to a tour through the cinematic theme park that is Tarantino’s mind.

Full Review | Jul 19, 2023

When [Sharon] Tate dances to Paul Revere and the Raiders, that's all we see: a woman dancing. If his cheery take on the actress has a lot of fantasy in it, that fairytale aspect is right there in the title: "Once Upon a Time…"

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 16, 2023

Not groundbreaking Tarantino, but it’s a fun trip back through time with real heart and likeable characters. Allow yourself to sink into its world and you’ll be rewarded with good tunes, laugh-out-loud jokes and moments of exhilaration.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2023

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood could have benefited much more had it taken a different approach.

Full Review | Jan 22, 2023

Take to heart the legendary director’s underlining commentary on the audience’s insatiable appetite and craving for the macabre, which seems to be the point entirely.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 20, 2022

It’s a movie full of surprises, none bigger than this – I kinda love it. And let me get this out of the way – I think it's Tarantino's best film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Tarantino at his most human and mature; much like Jackie Brown, he relies less on referential material and more on exploring rich, fully developed characters who seem to live and breathe.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 26, 2022

Gloriously grimy, its a masterpiece of nostalgia, allowing (Quentin Tarantino's) audience to inhabit a world of low-lives and cults.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 21, 2022

Overall, it's a good film with superlative acting performances that's well made and creates an authentic, immersive atmosphere of an idolized, nostalgic 1969 Los Angeles.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 20, 2022

In a world where franchises and reboots rule Hollywood, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is a breath of fresh air as it cements itself as one of the best films of 2019.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 18, 2022

It might be closing time in Tarantino's Hollywood, but he just wants to make sure we leave the lights on. If Hollywood gives studios the reassurance that movies like this still matter, maybe they'll still glow.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

Episode 45: The Farewell / Jackie Brown / Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

Full Review | Original Score: 90/100 | Oct 4, 2021

Very well executed... it truly is a love letter to an era of [Tarantino's] own making.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

The journeys of these three characters overlap in interesting ways, but it seems to add up to little more than, 'Well, that was kinda weird.'

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 15, 2021

An apt allegory for the delusional arc of Hollywood. Its internal downfall lies in the fact that this insight is most definitely accidental.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 30, 2021

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood comes out as number one. Its enthusiastic energy grabbed me, and I found myself in the odd position of laughing while watching a story involving Charles Manson.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2021

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Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Is a Seductive Pipe Dream

Quentin Tarantino isn’t the only director who makes movies that address, invoke, extol, parody, imitate, and fetishize other movies, but he’s one of the few whose dialogues with the past can occupy the same artistic plane as the objects of his reverence — and can even, on happier occasions, transcend it. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a very happy occasion. It’s a ramshackle ’60s pastiche that acquires a life of its own, evoking not just an era and its pop culture but also celebrating the impulse to recreate and (the effrontery!) rewrite the past in line with his fantasies. Say what you will about those fantasies — they’re innocent, they’re deviant, they’re sometimes weirdly both at once — but no one imparts his pipe dreams so seductively.

The ’60s that engages Tarantino doesn’t touch on the healthy and corrective elements of the counterculture. If anything, he’s a reactionary, nostalgic for the lone-gunman TV Westerns of the ’50s and early ’60s, while using the Manson “family” member s to represent hippies. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton, a fading Western TV star with a star-size drinking problem. Rick would self-destruct in private but for his bud, his amigo, his stuntman/driver/gofer/one-man entourage, Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt. Discomfort is built into the relationship, because Cliff can’t get work on his own (there’s a scandal in his past) and because Rick no longer has the clout to ensure that Cliff will be hired along with him. It gets awkward. Tagging along, Cliff seems like a bit of a masochist: After chauffeuring Rick home, he returns to his trailer, watches Mannix , and eats a bowl of macaroni and cheese (from a box) while his big dog beside him has a bowl of dog food (from a can — and slimy). They’re both good dogs. Rick, meanwhile, must consider a life in Italy with or without Cliff, where spaghetti Westerns beckon to American actors past their prime.

For a while, Once Upon a Time seems as if it’s going to be nothing but a series of extended digressions. But it’s shaped like a Western, and gets better, tighter, and more surprising as it moseys along, plainly building to the grisly, still-inexplicable tragedy that’s said to have ended the hedonistic feel of late-’60s Hollywood. Next door to Rick on Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills live Roman Polanski — super-hot off Rosemary’s Baby — and his young bride, Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ), whom we know going in will be butchered on the night of August 9, 1969, by Manson family members at the behest of their psychotic overlord. Tate is the film’s third and lesser protagonist, but Robbie has one of its most moving scenes, in which Tate goes to a theater to watch herself in a new Dean Martin–Matt Helm movie. If Tarantino has a Dream Girl, it would be Robbie here, her dirt-smudged bare feet (he’s notorious for his foot fetishism) on the chair in front of her, wide-eyed at seeing herself best Nancy Kwan in a karate fight. Be still my heart! That the footage onscreen is of the real Sharon Tate makes the sequence even more poignant.

I’m slightly older than Tarantino (I was born in ’59, Tarantino in ’63) but we share a nostalgia for a culture we saw only from afar, too young to have gotten in on all the R-rated fun. As shot in glowing hues by Robert Richardson and designed by Barbara Ling (production) and Arianne Phillips (costumes), the bric-a-brac constitutes its own kind of fetishism. Marquees with titles like Three in an Attic (what did the trio do up there?) are tantalizing, and so are radio commercials for perfume and trailers for such movies as C.C. and Company with Joe Namath on a motorcycle (plus Ann-Margret). There was no home video, of course, and no streaming, so you saw movies in theaters or waited for them to show up (edited, panned-and-scanned, broken up by commercials) on TV (on one of only six or seven channels). There’s no reason for Tarantino to have Rick’s effusive new agent (Al Pacino) mention that he watched Rick’s movies at home in 35 millimeter and TV shows in 16 except that it sounds so exotic, like saying you listened to a single at 45 rpm. An issue of TV Guide (how umbilically attached we were to it!) sits on Cliff’s table. Robert Goulet murders “MacArthur Park” on the TV screen. Tarantino sets off the Mannix opening with its floating split screens and brassy Lalo Schifrin theme the way Warhol set off his soup cans. The jam-packed soundtrack, chockablock with goodies, is its own love letter to the ’60s. Tarantino gives you the sense that he makes movies to be able to live inside them. They’re his time machines.

His dialogue doesn’t have the tension of his other movies, but after the interminable macho patter of The Hateful Eight , I welcomed the gentle pacing and the characters’ introspection. I’ve never enjoyed DiCaprio more than in the middle section, in which Rick is a guest villain on a pilot for another TV Western starring an actor played by Timothy Olyphant. He has an exchange on a porch with little Julia Butters (a star is born!) as an endearingly serious child actress that proves DiCaprio doesn’t have to grandstand to draw you into his character’s alienation. He doesn’t even have to furrow that wide brow to suggest deep thoughts — they’re there in his stillness and in his melancholy, near-musical drawl. There’s a scene in his trailer (“You’re a fuckin’ miserable drunk!” he screams at himself in the mirror. “Get the lines right or I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out!”) that taps into an aspect of DiCaprio’s personality I’ve never seen onscreen before — the fear of screwing up to a point where he won’t be noticed anymore. (Nicholas Hammond is wonderful as the show’s director, Sam Wanamaker, an actor who’d go on to recreate Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London; Tarantino introduces just enough Shakespearean diction into Wanamaker’s lines to capture the essence of his passion.)

Cliff’s big sequence is almost as amazing. Tarantino has never written something as quietly foreboding as Cliff’s visit to the Spahn Ranch, a former set for Westerns in which the Manson family has taken up residence. Cliff has given a lift to one of the “girls,” played by Margaret Qualley (best known for The Leftovers ), who beckons to him with her eyes and then her whole body — so light it’s as if she’s wafted on air currents. (This is another star-making turn.) Cliff trudges around the compound under the suspicious glare of other girls — a posse that includes Lena Dunham and Dakota Fanning as “Squeaky” Fromme — in search of the owner he worked with a decade earlier. In Mary Harron’s recent Manson drama , Charlie Says , the blind, elderly Spahn was seen being fellated by a Manson girl, but here he’s a full-blown figure of pathos played by Bruce Dern, whose customary cantankerousness suggests a man whose age and disabilities have helped transform him into a helpless addict. (Manson doesn’t appear in this sequence. Damon Herriman plays him with spooky dishevelment in a scene in which the madman wanders onto Tate’s property looking for its previous resident, the music producer Terry Melcher.)

It’s hard to do justice to the riches of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , to its cameos (Damian Lewis as mean Steve McQueen!) and its droll bits of business, among them a devilish shot featuring a speargun. Tarantino has audaciously written Bruce Lee (played by Mike Moh) as an arrogant dick who lectures Hollywood stuntmen on his superiority. There are lapses. Al Pacino doesn’t have the fine-tuning for a Tarantino movie — his generalized hamminess sticks out. The shots of the lank-haired, scowling Manson girls spread out in a line are a misogynist’s nightmare — they look ready to tear Cliff to pieces like the Dionysian harpies in The Bacchae . I’m troubled that Tarantino suggests (even satirically) that square-jawed macho cowboys were victims of the counterculture and would have been (along with their fists, guns, and flamethrowers) the answer to its excesses.

But on its own terms, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a farrago of genius. Because of the horror that’s imminent, a sequence in which Hollywood’s neon signs (El Coyote, Musso & Frank, and more) hum to life as the sky darkens on August 9 is both lyrical and bristling with dread. The convulsively brutal climax I wouldn’t dare to spoil. The finale is a wonder. Has there ever been a scene so simultaneously euphoric and heartbreaking? Tarantino’s dream world is a sadistic place, but in a way it’s sublime, like heaven nestled inside hell.

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‘once upon a time in hollywood’: film review | cannes 2019.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt play a fading action star and his inseparable stunt double in Quentin Tarantino's freewheeling trip through 1969 Tinseltown at the time of the Manson murders.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Quentin Tarantino renews his vows as a devout fanboy, rifling through his formative influences in vintage American B-movies and TV, spaghetti Westerns, martial arts, popular music and an endless assortment of cultural ephemera in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood . In his ninth feature, the writer-director at the same time is having sly fun riffing on his own work, in particular his penchant for gleeful revisionist history. A sizable audience will doubtless share that enjoyment, even if the two ambling hours of detours, recaps and diversions that precede the standard climactic explosion of graphic violence are virtually plotless.

The central characters — played by returning Tarantino cohorts Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in entertainingly loose performances dripping with self-irony and pleasurable chemistry — are faded television cowboy Rick Dalton and his longtime stunt-double Cliff Booth. But since an excess of DUIs cost Rick his license, war hero Cliff is now more of a driver and all-round gofer, doing little actual stunt work, while Rick’s planned transition into action movies has failed to catch fire. That his extensively excerpted star vehicles bear some resemblance to Inglourious Basterds and The Hateful Eight makes Rick’s gnawing doubts about his career seem almost like an exploration of Tarantino’s own creative crisis. Or maybe not.

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Release date : Friday, July 26 Venue : Cannes Film Festival (Competition) Cast : Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Julia Butters, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Mike Moh, Luke Perry, Damian Lewis, Al Pacino Director-screenwriter : Quentin Tarantino

With richly detailed input from production designer Barbara Ling and beyond-cool retro fashions from costumer Arianne Phillips, Tarantino folds the low-key buddy comedy into a lovingly re-created, almost fetishistic celebration of late ’60s Hollywood, infused with color and vitality by cinematographer Robbie Richardson. It’s stuffed with TV and movie pastiches as well as actual clips, endless billboards and movie theater marquees, and sustained bursts of Los Angeles station KHJ, blasting pop tunes and commercials over car radios throughout. And in case you’d forgotten Tarantino’s weird thing about women’s feet, this movie is here to remind us in a big way.

Running parallel to Rick and Cliff’s story are glimpses into the more glamorous lives of Rick’s Cielo Drive neighbors, Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ) and Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), whose proximity only makes Rick’s exclusion from the New Hollywood club sting more. At a Playboy Mansion party, while Sharon dances with Michelle Phillips and Mama Cass, Damian Lewis drops by as Steve McQueen to explain that Sharon’s ex-fiance, hairdresser Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), remains in the picture waiting for Polanski to screw up the marriage.

Then there are the clusters of female Manson family acolytes, either dumpster-diving for food or hanging out on street corners to give tourists a thrill. Rick dismisses them as hippie trash, while Cliff is more intrigued, particularly by a flirty nymph in a crochet halter top and denim cutoffs named Pussycat, played by Margaret Qualley in a performance of insouciant sexual authority.

One of the movie’s best scenes comes when Cliff drives Pussycat home to the disused Spahn Movie Ranch and has an uneasy meeting with her adoptive family members, including wary earth mother Gypsy (Lena Dunham) and an openly hostile Squeaky Fromme (Dakota Fanning). Cliff knows the place well from the days of Rick’s TV show Bounty Law , and his insistence on seeing the owner, George Spahn (Bruce Dern), leaves him with more questions than answers. The classic Western element of a cocksure stranger moseying into a town where he’s met by suspicious gazes fits neatly with Tarantino’s thematic interest in the outsize influence of Hollywood on American life.

Audiences in Cannes have been urged in a personal note from the director and producers to refrain from plot spoilers, so while it’s well known that the movie deals with the period immediately surrounding the Manson murders, let’s just say Tarantino puts his own playful spin on that horrific chapter of Hollywood history, which won’t be entirely surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention to his recent work.

The folks who found the violence against the one significant female character in The Hateful Eight especially noxious will have more to complain about here, while others who respond to the mellow groove of the Rick-Cliff dynamic will possibly find the swerve into gnarly Grand Guignol a little jarring.

Polanski remains a background figure, away on a shoot in England on the fateful night, but Tate floats through the movie like a golden-haired dream goddess in miniskirts and go-go boots. Robbie is given disappointingly little to do aside from look gorgeous, but she has one captivating scene in which Sharon wanders into a movie theater to watch the Dean Martin spy caper  The Wrecking Crew , in which she co-starred, her face lighting up with every audience reaction to the real Tate’s klutzy comedy onscreen.

Tarantino has frequently been more a maestro of the linked vignette than a disciplined narrative storyteller, and that’s very much the case here as the bulk of the movie zigs and zags through the experiences of Rick and Cliff, touching on Hollywood lore both based in fact and purely fictional.

A mention that Cliff got away with killing his wife segues to a brief scene snippet with implied echoes of Natalie Wood’s death. And there’s an amusing faceoff with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) on the shoot of The Green Hornet , which gets Cliff kicked off the set by the stunt coordinator, played by Kurt Russell in one of many star cameos. But the main fact we learn about Cliff is his loyalty to Rick and his indulgent love for Brandy, the red Rottweiler that shares his trailer out by the Van Nuys drive-in. Still, Pitt’s self-satisfied swagger and easygoing warmth haven’t been put to such winning use in years.

What Tarantino really gets off on here is playfully re-creating the magic of Hollywood 50 years ago. The backlot scenes of Cliff at work are terrific, notably one extended interlude where he’s shooting a guest villain spot on a new series called Lancer , appearing with Timothy Olyphant, Scoot McNairy and Luke Perry, in his final screen role, which adds a touching note. The precocious intelligence and seriousness about her craft of an 8-year-old Method actress (Julia Butters, wonderful) adds to Rick’s self-disgust after too many whiskey sours the night before cause him to keep flubbing lines. And when he returns after a furious pep talk with himself in his trailer and aces a dialogue-heavy scene, the evidence that Rick is indeed a real actor is as much for his benefit as ours. The tears welling in DiCaprio’s eyes pack unexpected poignancy.

A rushed account of Rick’s six months in Italy shooting spaghetti Westerns ( Kill Me Quick, Ringo, Said the Gringo ) and Bond knockoffs ( Operazione Dyn-o-mite ) — a career move orchestrated by Al Pacino as a smarmy agent — feels like a perfunctory genuflection to Tarantino idols like Sergio Corbucci. (The title itself is a Sergio Leone homage.) And the return to the sporadic narration heard briefly earlier and then abandoned for most of the movie is clumsy. But there’s as much soulfulness as actorly vanity in DiCaprio’s characterization, which makes the struggle of this functioning alcoholic to maintain some career momentum quite touching.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood  is uneven, unwieldy in its structure and not without its flat patches. But it’s also a disarming and characteristically subversive love letter to its inspiration, in which Tarantino rebuilds the Dream Factory as it existed during the time of his childhood, while rewriting the traumatic episode often identified as the end of that era.

Full credits

Production companies: Heyday Films, Columbia Pictures, Bona Film Group Co. Distributor: Sony/Columbia Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Julia Butters, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Mike Moh, Luke Perry, Damian Lewis, Al Pacino, Nicholas Hammond, Samantha Robinson, Lorenza Izzo, Costa Ronin, Perla Haney-Jardine, Damon Herriman, Lena Dunham, Kurt Russell, Scoot McNairy, Michael Madsen, Rumer Willis, Rafal Zawierucha Director-screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino Producers: David Heyman, Shannon McIntosh, Quentin Tarantino Executive producers: Georgia Kacandes, Yu Dong, Jeffrey Chan Director of photography: Robert Richardson Production designer: Barbara Ling Costume designer: Arianne Phillips Editor: Fred Raskin Visual effects designer: John Dykstra Casting: Victoria Thomas Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)

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Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a wild, shaggy '60s thrill ride

All directors become who they are because they love movies; though it’s hard, after watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , to think of one who loves them more outrageously and obsessively than Quentin Tarantino . (Except maybe Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Inherent Vice would make for an excellent and extremely time-consuming double feature).

The 56-year-old’s ninth — and so he promises, penultimate — film feels like the sprawling confluence of every last thread in his creative DNA: lock-jawed Westerns, splattery exploitation, sex, sideburns, Nazis, nihilists, femmes who may or may not be fatales. It’s shaggy and self-indulgent and almost scandalously long; and in nearly every moment, pretty glorious.

Once also has the good luck of being anchored by what might be two of the last true movie stars: Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, a boozy, anxious actor staring down the bell curve of a never-quite-stellar career, and Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, his taciturn stuntman turned trusty sidekick and consigliere.

Together, they spend a lot of time cruising the canyons and boulevards of circa-1969 Los Angeles, chain-smoking on dusty backlots, and drinking beers in Dalton’s modest ranch house on Cielo Drive — a location that just happens to put him right next door to then-ascendent Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski and his starlet wife, Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ).

Any viewer with a pop-culture memory or a ragged paperback of Helter Skelter will clock this address right away as the primary site of the Manson Family murders, the notoriously brutal spree that essentially ended the idea (if not ideals) of a flower-powered ’60s counterculture. And Tarantino will get there, eventually.

But first, he takes some 140 fantastically rambling minutes to wend his way into the dark-heart center of this business we call show — one so littered with bravura set pieces and stars that even the smallest cameos bring the thrill of instantly familiar faces: deal-making macher (Al Pacino), ornery stuntman (Kurt Russell), fey director (Nicholas Hammond), squinty TV cowboy (Luke Perry), caftaned Manson girl (Dakota Fanning, Lena Dunham). Though lesser-known names, including Margaret Qualley as a hot-pantsed teenage libertine and Julia Butters as a tiny, intensely precocious child actress, carve out their own unforgettable moments too.

Damien Lewis and Mike Moh step in, respectively, to portray Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee in brief scenes (the latter especially is a brilliant piece of standalone physical comedy), and Los Angeles — from the peak poolside hedonism of the Playboy Mansion to the tumbleweed abandon of Spahn Movie Ranch — plays itself to the sun-bleached hilt. Costume designer Arianne Phillips ( Nocturnal Animals , Walk the Line ) lavishes care on every last go-go boot and gold-nugget pinkie ring, and Barbara Ling’s impeccable production design seems to live entirely outside the pesky confines of studio budget lines.

DiCaprio and Pitt are probably as good as they’ve ever been in anything: one superbly channeling the outsize ego and fragility of an actor in early-midlife spiral, the other a sort of beach-boy Lebowski with a singular gift for sudden violence. Robbie looks great as Tate, but she remains mostly a sweet-tempered cypher, all beatific smiles and swinging blond hair. The only thing we learn, really, is that she wanted to be loved and recognized like anyone else, and that she really liked Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Some viewers might start to wonder somewhere around the two-and-a-half-hour mark if Tarantino actually has a plan to bring this all together, or merely wants to keep unspooling his celluloid valentine until the reels run out. There’s a wild twist coming, one you can either choose to go with or not; it feels a lot better to let it in. No doubt there will be uncountable baby Tarantinos watching Once Upon a Time in dark theaters and dreaming their own future Hollywood dreams; until then, he’s still one of the most original, confounding, and purely enjoyable auteurs we’ve got. A–

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‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ Review: Pitt and DiCaprio Set Tarantino’s Fairy Tale Ablaze

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Despite the fighting, bloodshed and, often, gore that populates a Quentin Tarantino film, there almost always a key emotional thrust to the storyline.  Whether it’s Django’s search for his wife Broomhilda or Jackie Brown’s unrequited love for her bail bondsman or The Bride seeking revenge for her unborn daughter, it’s been there.  Tarantino, however, has never made a film that ends up as sweet and nostalgic as his latest, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood .

Debuting at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival 25 years after Pulp Fiction took the Palm d’ Or, Once Upon begins its tale on Saturday, February 8, 1969 in the heart of tinseltown. Rick Dalton ( Leonardo DiCaprio ), a once popular TV actor who starred in the ‘50s TV series Bounty Law , now finds himself relegated to guest spots to pay the bills.  His almost constant companion is Cliff Booth ( Brad Pitt ), his one-time stunt double that now mostly acts as his chauffer and house sitter (it appears Rick earned a few too many DUI’s to keep driving that fancy car of his).

While having drinks at Musso and Frank’s Grill one evening, producer Marvin Schwarzs ( Al Pacino ), tries to convince Rick to move to Rome to star in Spaghetti Westerns. According to Marvin, once you start playing the villain in too many guest appearances the television viewing audience will no longer see you as the hero.  And the way things are going his chances of getting another leading role in a TV program are slim.  Why not go to Italy and make some money?  Rick walks away horrified at the prospect telling Cliff that this must mean his acting career is on its last legs.

When they arrive at Rick’s home in the Hollywood Hills, Tarantino makes sure the street sign comes into full view for the audience.  Rick lives on Ceilo Drive, a road notorious in the history of Los Angeles.  That’s also the street where Roman Polanski ( Rafał Zawierucha ) and his wife Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ) lived.  Tate and three others were killed in her home by members of the Manson family in a crime that rocked Hollywood and the nation.  But we are months from that massacre.  In Once Upon , Rick is Tate’s neighbor and simply can’t believe the Rosemary Baby director has moved in next door.

A few days later Rick is working on another TV Western, Lancer .  This time he’s guest starring in the unexpectedly juicy part as, yes, you guessed it, a villain in the Old West, but this part is actually pretty good.  DiCaprio plays the emotional insecurity of an actor here to pitch perfect effect as Rick’s insecurity over his own talent is so low it takes the adulation of his 8-year-old co-star to make him think he still might have it. Rick knocks it out of the park though.  The talent is legit.

Cliff, meanwhile, has been flirting with Kitty Kat ( Margaret Qualley ), a “hippie” he keeps seeing around town that is always looking to hitchhike. Free for the day, he offers her a ride only to discover she’s living on the Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth with a bunch of her “friends.”  That’s a property quite far from the center of the city where Cliff had shot a few Westerns years before (historical note: it was the primary exterior for Bonanza ).  When they arrive, Cliff immediately realizes things are a little off.  There are a ton of young “hippie” women about and just a few men staying on the property.  The audience likely knows these are members of Charles Manson’s cult, but Cliff surely doesn’t. He eventually gets by the intimidating Squeaky ( Dakota Fanning ) to check up on the owner, George Spahn ( Bruce Dern ), but the old man is blind and dementia may have gotten the best of him.

As all this transpires, Sharon is enjoying her return to Los Angeles.  She heads to the Bruin Theater in Westwood to watch her latest film, The Wrecking Crew and goes to the Playboy mansion with Roman where she dances the night away.  She’s a light, a pixie on Hollywood’s star-filled sky.

Eventually Rick, along with Cliff, head to Italy for six months.  He makes some movies, gains some weight and returns home with a new Italian wife, Francesca ( Lorenza Izzo ).  Rick also gives Cliff the inevitable news he won’t be able to afford his services any longer.  But after a long transatlantic flight they decide to have dinner to celebrate coming home.  It’s August 9, 1969. A night that will mark an end of an era in Hollywood.

We’re not going to pretend that Once Upon isn’t another Tarantino film that plays with revisionist history.  The fact Rick lives right next to Polanski and Tate gives that away very early on.  There is a difference this time around.  Unlike Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained , what happens in Once Upon isn’t in the context of revenge or moral justice.  Born in 1963, Tarantino spent much of his childhood in Los Angeles county.  He was only six on that fateful night, but he knows how it tainted how many saw Hollywood from that point forward.  The faux innocence meticulously managed by the big studio machines had been fading for a decade, but it was truly lost that night.  And, if you didn’t know already, Tarantino loves Hollywood which is why this film is the ultimate love letter from him.  You can tell from the moment Tarantino puts the camera behind Rick and Cliff as they drive through the curves of the Hollywood Hills.  That’s something you come to love about LA only when you live there.  He returns to it often.  He also breathtakingly restores landmarks such as the Van Nuys Drive-In, the marquees on Hollywood Blvd, the Cinerama Dome, the Vine theater and even a Taco Bell (not a misprint), just to name a few.  There’s no homeless people.  No crime.  No boarded-up stores or empty parking lots.  Those were all there in 1969, of course, but not in Once Upon .  Only the magic stands out.

Tarantino makes sure there is also a lot of fun to go around though.  Cliff has a showdown with Bruce Lee on the set of The Green Hornet and his faithful dog deserves star billing.  There’s an acid dipped cigarette that you know is going to matter at some point. Familiar faces such as Timothy Olyphant, Luke Perry, Mark Madsen, Lena Dunham and Damien Lewis stand out in small roles.  And while Kurt Russell appears on screen as stunt coordinator it’s his gentle voice over that makes you eventually realize the narrator is not only reading from a book, but a fairy tale to be precise.

And, yes, people get punched.  There are some shocking happenings from a gore standpoint although compared to other Tarantino fare it’s tempered a bit. But it also elicits a reaction no other Tarantino film has to date.  In fact, it seems sacrilegious to describe it this way, but when the final shot fades out and the title of the film appears on screen it may be the first Tarantino film that leaves with a genuine sense of, wait for it, hope.

Catch up on all of our reviews from the 2019 Cannes Film Festival below:

• The Dead Don’t Die
• The Lighthouse
• Pain and Glory
• Too Old to Die Young

This is a repost of Gregory's review of the film from Cannes earlier this year.

‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ Review: Tarantino’s Violent Tinseltown Valentine

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

On a hot August night in 1969, four murderous members of Charles Manson’s cult “family” invaded the Los Angeles home of pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Her husband, director Roman Polanski, was in Europe on business. What happened next made headlines and, for better or worse, history. You might not remember everything the way that Quentin Tarantino remembers it in Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood. But you won’t forget a second of what the writer-director puts onscreen. It’s Tarantino’s ninth film, and he claims it will be his next-to-last. If so, he’s going out with a bang.

The World — and Hollywood — According to Quentin Tarantino

The filmmaker gives Sharon ( Margot Robbie ) a fictional neighbor on Cielo Drive. He’s Rick Dalton ( Leonardo DiCaprio ), a star of TV Westerns who’s boozing away what’s left of his flagging career. Rick’s only friend is Cliff Booth ( Brad Pitt ), his stunt double and confidante who lives in a trailer near the Van Nuys Drive-In with a rust-colored Rottweiler named Brandy. Cliff is a Vietnam vet and has been largely unemployable since rumors started swirling that he killed his wife and got away with it.

It’s a ballsy Tarantino move, casting two of the biggest and most likable stars in Hollywood as losers. But DiCaprio ( Django Unchained ), 44, and Pitt ( Inglourious Basterds ), 55, do him proud working against type. They’re a landmark screen team whose explosively funny, emotionally complex performances stand with their very best. Pitt is flat-out hilarious when Clint gets a stunt job on The Green Hornet and goads an arrogant Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), starring as Kato, into a battle that ends badly for the Fists of Fury legend.

DiCaprio also wins big laughs trying to disguise Rick’s woe when his career hits the skids. A high-powered agent (Al Pacino, having a ball) tells the actor he’s killing his career doing guest spots as villains in TV shows. In a satisfying irony, he receives the best reviews of his career playing the heavy. Success also follows when Rick heeds his agent’s advice to star in spaghetti Westerns abroad, like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. (A side note: Reynolds himself was cast to play George Spahn, the owner of a movie ranch used by the Manson cult as a hideout. Bruce Dern took the role after the Smokey and the Bandit star’s death.)

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All the actors, in roles large and small, bring their A games to the film. Two hours and 40 minutes can feel long for some. I wouldn’t change a frame. Tarantino laughs at a lot of things in his movies, especially his own leap through genres in films as diverse as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and both volumes of Kill Bill. But not for a minute does he fake his love for the Hollywood of the late Sixties. With the help of master cinematographer Robert Richardson, costume designer Arianne Phillips, and editor Fred Raskin, the period of backlot Hollywood is painstakingly recaptured. You can feel Tarantino’s mad love for movies in all their disreputable dazzle and subversive art in every shot.

This doesn’t mean that violence is absent. The Manson era is just one reflection of the rise of American bloodlust. It’s one of the Manson girls, Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), who gets Cliff to give her a ride to the Spahn ranch, where helter-skelter reigns. And when the cult gets closer to home, no opportunity for splatter is spared.

What is most shocking about the film is its open heart toward innocence, Sharon in particular. Robbie plays her like a point of light undimmed by cynicism. She enters a theater to watch an audience watch her in a 
Dean Martin spy caper and stays to revel in their joy. Rick feels nurtured in his art by a fellow thespian, who is blunt, honest, and only eight years old. As played by the mesmerizing Julia Butters, the kid is another source of incandescence in a film where Tarantino gives hope the last word.

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Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Review

14 Aug 2019

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood features perhaps the most Quentin Tarantino -y shot of any Quentin Tarantino movie yet: wannabe movie star Sharon Tate ( Robbie ) with her dirty bare feet up on a cinema seat watching pretty much forgotten 1969 James Bond rip-off The Wrecking Crew starring Dean Martin. Yet foot fetishisms and cult movies are not the only QT obsession to be celebrated in his ninth movie; drive-ins, doughnuts, tracking shots following cars, key characters meeting at traffic lights, bubblegum pop music, reinventing forgotten actors (hello, TV Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond as film director Sam Wanamaker), and the joy of radio are all present and correct. OUATIH is a heady compendium of Tarantino inspirations, ideas and motifs, brilliantly made and perfectly performed, but perhaps lacking the zip, fun and intensity to make it your new favourite Tarantino flick.

At its heart, OUATIH is a likeable buddy movie between Burt Reynolds-alike TV actor Rick Dalton ( DiCaprio ) and his stuntman-turned-gofer Cliff Booth ( Pitt ). Rick is the former star of ’50s Western show Bounty Law but, as pointed out by agent Marvin Schwarzs ( Al Pacino in an over-extended cameo), is on the skids, playing villains opposite up-and-comers, subtly reinforcing his second-fiddle status. Tarantino has a blast sketching out Dalton’s career from fake TV featurettes to clips of films (‘The Fourteen Fists Of McCluskey’ sees Dalton flamethrower Nazis!) to brilliantly conceived posters (‘Operation Dyn-O-Mite!’). Best of all, Dalton defends himself over accusations of not being cast in a ’60s classic so Tarantino cheekily but seamlessly inserts DiCaprio into the famous flick. It’s the director at his most playful and OUATIH could have benefited a bit more from his silly side.

If Dalton is on the verge of becoming a has-been, his cohort, Cliff Booth, is a never-was, a stuntman who can’t get work so is forced to drive Rick around, living in a trailer and feeding his mutt. He also may or may not have killed his wife. Both QT alumni — DiCaprio as Calvin Candie in Django Unchained , Pitt as Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds — the pair are mellow, enjoyable company radiating movie star chemistry from every pore (watch them watching TV show FBI ). Pitt’s confident swagger and poise is present in every frame but DiCaprio adds different notes; Dalton is a man who can see that he is yesterday’s news and finds a poignancy as he comes up against the edge of his talent. Reading a pulp Western novel about a horse breaker with the genius name ‘Easy Breezy’, Dalton breaks down on recognising himself: “He’s not the best anymore. He’s coming to terms with what it’s like to become slightly more useless each day.” It’s a moment of heart rare in the director’s canon.

It’s Tarantino working in a less showboat-y, more mature mode, so pack patience with your popcorn.

The third star on Once Upon A Time In Hollywood ’s walk of fame is Sharon Tate (Robbie), an actor on the brink of stardom and Manson murder infamy, bombing around LA in a sports car with husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and next-door neighbour of Rick Dalton. Much has been made of Tarantino’s treatment of Tate, barely giving her a voice, but what she lacks in dialogue, Robbie compensates for with gesture and charisma, Tarantino imbuing the character with affection. She might not have enough screen time to enter the Female Tarantino Characters Hall Of Fame — we salute you Mia Wallace, Jackie Brown, Beatrix Kiddo, Shosanna Dreyfus and Daisy Domergue — but she makes Tate register, especially when charming her way into seeing her own film for free. More memorable are The Leftovers ’ Margaret Qualley as Pussycat, a vibrant, livewire hitchhiker and, best of all, Julia Butters as a loquacious eight-year-old actor reading a Walt Disney biography and espousing the Method (she can only be called by her character name). This is QT at his best: original, unexpected and delightful.

The three separate storylines — Dalton, Booth and Tate — form a mosaic depicting a fascinating era of American pop history, when old-school machismo met the progressive counter culture and one guard gave way to another. Yet what OUATIH doesn’t coalesce into is a gripping story. This is not the razor-wire tautness of Reservoir Dogs or the thrill of Pulp Fiction ’s non linear razzle dazzle. Instead it provides a loose framework for scenes to run along different tracks. Some of the scenes are fantastic (Booth’s run-in with Bruce Lee , played by Mike Moh ), others drift (Dalton as a guest villain in TV Western Lancer ). In the second half, a narrator becomes more prominent to shore up less surefooted storytelling. You’ll also be hard-pressed to find that killer QT line you’ll still be quoting at Christmas. It’s Tarantino working in a less showboat-y, more mature mode — it shares DNA with Jackie Brown — so pack patience with your popcorn.

As ever, the gear-shifts between tones come thick and fast — your expectations are continually and royally fucked. Cliff’s run-in with Manson’s followers (featuring Lena Dunham and Dakota Fanning ) is all set fair for an old-school Western showdown but goes to a completely different place. By the time Manson’s acolytes arrive for their night with destiny (or is it?), one of them delivers a chilling denouncement of Hollywood’s fascination with murder (“My idea is to kill the people who taught us to kill”), invoking the film-creates-violence debate Tarantino has been battling his whole career. Moments later, the film jumps headfirst into a whole new sphere of madness altogether.

At every stage, the filmmaking is on point. Robert Richardson’s stunning cinematography pops but never feels overly mannered, Arianne Phillips’ costume design is too stylish for words, and Harry Cohen’s dense, bravura sound design interweaves music, radio chat, adverts and TV chatter to spellbinding effect. It’s a film that courses with a love of moviemaking and Hollywood lore (a party sees Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen) and might be Tarantino’s most personal film to date; look out for a clutch of his repertory group actors and nods to his own universe (be sure to stay in your seats, QT is going MCU with an end-credits sting). It has a skein of melancholy, for a bygone age he couldn’t partake in, and possibly for his own career. This is reputedly his penultimate film, stopping at the magic ten. Even if its his own choice, the reverie of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood suggests he’ll miss it. And we’ll miss him too.

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Review: A Quentin Tarantino skeptic takes great pleasure in ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’

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I go back with Quentin Tarantino, way back, starting with being in the room at 1992’s Sundance Film Festival when his debut feature, “Reservoir Dogs,” had one of its very first screenings.

When a visibly pained audience member asked Tarantino in the Q&A how he justified the film’s tidal waves of violence, the director almost didn’t understand the question. “Justify it?” he echoed before just about roaring, “I don’t have to justify it. I love it!”

Over the next quarter-century, little has changed. To enjoy Tarantino was to embrace his preening style, to share his reductive view of cinema and the world and violence’s preeminent place in both.

I was a chronic dissenter — I still get occasional grief about my “Pulp Fiction” review — so how is it that I reacted with distinct pleasure to the writer-director’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”?

The film toplines Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as, respectively, TV star Rick Dalton and his stuntman Cliff Booth, longtime best friends kicking around Hollywood in 1969 with Charlie Manson and company lurking in the background. Had Tarantino changed, had I, or was it both of us?

At age 56 and recently married, Tarantino talked at the film’s Cannes press conference about “taking stock,” and in fact “Once Upon a Time” strikes a chord that is distinctly elegiac and unexpectedly emotional, especially coming from him.

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Though florid Italian westerns, primarily those of Sergio Corbucci , one of Tarantino’s idols, are front and center in the story line, the tone of this film owes as much to low-key, end-of-an-era Hollywood westerns like the Joel McCrea/Randolph Scott pairing in Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country.” Really.

Don’t misunderstand, the familiar Tarantino gut-clenching ultra-violence, especially against women, has hardly disappeared. But it has been in effect quarantined to several wrenching minutes near the end of what is for most of its leisurely two-hour, 41-minute length a tribute to both a bygone era and the kind of masculine charisma and camaraderie the movies have always specialized in.

What this means in practice is that what would be peripheral elsewhere is central here. Things like character moments and quirks of personality as well as detailed specifics of popular culture, whether they be from film, TV, music or commercials, are not window dressing to pass the time until the plot kicks in; they are the essential reason “Once Upon a Time” exists.

When Tarantino says in the press notes “I tried a couple of different stories and then I decided no, I didn’t want to put them [his protagonists] though some typical melodramatic plotline,” he’s not being coy, he’s telling the truth.

With Victoria Thomas as casting director, “Once Upon a Time” is rich in involving acting across the board, including Dakota Fanning as Manson honcho Squeaky Fromme, the ageless Bruce Dern as rancher George Spahn and Margaret Qualley, a would-be nun in “Novitiate” here seen as the inescapably promiscuous Manson follower Pussycat.

Best of all, not surprisingly, are DiCaprio and Pitt, completely at ease with their parts and each other, the joke being that they use their enormous movie star presences to play a below-the-line stuntman and a second-tier star afraid of falling further, characters Tarantino feels unmistakable warmth toward.

Inspired by real-life relationships like those between Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham or Steve McQueen and Bud Ekins, the pair function here a bit like Raymond Chandler’s tarnished knights, doing good despite themselves, an association heightened by a bookstore scene reminiscent of one in Humphrey Bogart’s “The Big Sleep.”

Also front and center is Tarantino’s passion for the late ’60s in general and its popular culture and moviemaking machinery in particular.

The specificity of “Once Upon a Time’s” references to the artifacts of the era is astonishing to the point of obsession, including having production designer Barbara Ling fabricate false fronts to place in front of today’s Hollywood Boulevard establishments and encouraging Musso & Frank to pull period dinnerware out of storage.

Every item we see onscreen, and we see lots of them, from not one but a series of Hopalong Cassidy mugs to a copy of a “Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos” comic book, looks like it was carefully selected because of its closeness to the filmmaker’s heart.

Talking to Tarantino about the era, DiCaprio said at Cannes, was “almost like tapping into a computer database — his knowledge is unfathomable,” adding accurately, “He’s made a love letter to his industry.”

After providing us with a brief but pithy introduction to “Bounty Law,” the recently discontinued show that made Rick Dalton a household name, “Once Upon a Time” walks us through three days, two in February and one in August, in star and stuntman’s intertwined lives, starting with Dalton’s Musso lunch with top agent Marvin Schwarzs.

Expertly chewing the scenery like he just came off a hunger strike, Al Pacino brings us up to speed on Rick Dalton’s filmography, lavishing special praise on the action epic “The 14 Fists of McCluskey.” (No one invents names like Tarantino.)

But that career is hanging in the balance, Schwarzs explains, before holding out a lifeline à la Clint Eastwood of doing westerns in Italy, something Dalton, with no love of cinema made by “I-talians,” initially resists.

Introduced at this point are Dalton’s recently moved-in neighbors on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, the glamorous Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ), briefly seen husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and best friend Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch).

Also glimpsed momentarily is Charlie Manson (Damon Herriman), though members of his family hanging out at Spahn Movie Ranch (including characters played by Lena Dunham and Maya Hawke) are given more visibility.

While conventional plot elements do appear from time to time, especially toward the conclusion, most of “Once Upon a Time” consists of the string of stand-alone vignettes that Tarantino clearly cherishes.

The most memorable include Sharon Tate spending an afternoon enjoying her performance in “The Wrecking Crew” at the Bruin in Westwood and Rick Dalton having an elaborate heart-to-heart chat with a wise-beyond-her-years 8-year-old actress (wonderfully played by Julia Butters) prior to a big scene.

And then there is Pitt’s Cliff Booth, improbably up on a roof to fix a TV antenna, casually taking off his shirt to reveal a perfectly toned and impeccably lit upper body. Movie star moments don’t get any purer than that.

Also pure and not to be underestimated is how personal so much of what we see is to Tarantino. He’s showcased the massive three-sheet-size poster for “The Golden Stallion,” one of his favorite films; given a cameo to his wife, Daniella Pick; and even found time for a charming montage of great L.A. neon (El Coyote, Musso & Frank, Chili John’s and more) lighting up at twilight.

Tarantino was a boy of 6 in 1969, living far from the center of Los Angeles, and in a sense what he’s done here is re-create the world he’s imagined the adults were living in at the time. If it plays like a fairy tale, and it does, don’t forget the first words in the title are “Once Upon a Time.”

'Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood'

Rated: R, for language, some strong graphic violence, drug use and sexual references Running time: 2 hours, 41 minutes Playing: Starts July 26 in general release

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Review: Quentin Tarantino’s Obscenely Regressive Vision of the Sixties in “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood”

Like most of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, his new one, “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood,” is driven by cultural nostalgia. Yet, this time around, Tarantino’s nostalgia is his film’s guiding principle, its entire ideology—in particular, a nostalgia (catnip to critics) for the classic age of Hollywood movies and for the people who were responsible for it, both onscreen and behind the scenes. The movie draws a very clear line regarding the end of that classic age: it’s set in 1969, at a time when the studios were in financial crisis owing to their trouble keeping up with changing times, and its plot involves the event that’s widely cited as the end of an era, the Manson Family killings of Sharon Tate and four others at the house that she shared with her husband, Roman Polanski. The heroism of his Hollywood characters is an idea that Tarantino works out gradually until it bursts forth, in a final-act twist, with a shocking clarity. “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” has been called Tarantino’s most personal film, and that may well be true—it’s far more revealing about Tarantino than about Hollywood itself, and his vision of the times in question turns out to be obscenely regressive.

The movie is centered on a declining Western-style actor named Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, factotum, and friend Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Rick has had big roles in a handful of action movies (including a Second World War film in which he uses a flamethrower to incinerate a bunch of Nazis), but he’s most famous as the star of a TV Western series, “Bounty Law.” At the start of the film, Rick is mainly doing roles as a guest star in other action series—but, as a veteran agent named Marvin Schwarzs (Al Pacino) warns him, he is always cast as the villain, and audiences are being conditioned to find him unsympathetic, and therefore un-star-like.

Rick owns a house, where he and Cliff hang out and watch TV (and watch Rick on TV); right next door to Rick live a newlywed couple, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), whose presence sparks Rick’s dream of a role in one of the famous director’s movies. Cliff, who lives in a trailer behind a drive-in movie theatre, is described as a real-life war hero, though it’s never made clear which war he was a hero of; for that matter, almost nothing is known about his past, except that he’s trailed by nasty rumors that he killed his wife and got away with it. (Tellingly, a flashback to the deadly incident leaves it unclear whether her death was an accident or murder—lest showing the murder turn Tarantino’s hero into an anti-hero.) The movie’s action is constructed, with an audacious sense of composition, as three-days-in-the-lives-of; almost the entire two-hour-and-forty-minute span consists of a series of set pieces (adorned with brief flashbacks and visual asides) that are dated February 8 and 9, 1969, and then leap ahead six months to August 8th and 9th—the night of the Tate murders.

“Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is a star vehicle; Tarantino provides DiCaprio and Pitt with a showcase that allows them to deliver, separately and together, a series of iconic moments that leap out of the film, ready-made to be excerpted in trailers and impressed in viewers’ memory. They’re the kind of moments that DiCaprio delivers, for instance, when he lends Rick a cheesy megawatt grin during an interview, or that Pitt delivers when Cliff, preparing to smoke an LSD-laced cigarette that he has been saving for a special occasion, freezes in place and, lighting it, purrs, “And away we go.” The coolest such moment is one that Tarantino himself, with deft directorial technique, delivers thanks to a stunt or a special effect: when Cliff, preparing to repair Rick’s TV antenna, strips to the waist, straps on a tool belt, and, dispensing with a ladder, leaps from the driveway to the roof in a few easy bounds.

Tarantino does not only create such moments—his movie is a loving dramatization of the power of certain kinds of actors, in conjunction with writer-directors and, above all, an entire system of production, to deliver them. “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is a paean to the recently lost age of the loudly lamented midrange drama for adults which is just such a movie itself. (Here, Tarantino’s obsessions intersect with modern critical sensibility—and vulnerability.) Tarantino is delivering what he considers to be a cinematic gift horse, a popular film with real artistic ambitions—and his movie’s very theme is the fruitless, counterproductive, and even misguided energy that would be wasted looking in the horse’s mouth. If only the old-line Hollywood people of the fifties and sixties had maintained their pride of place—if only the times hadn’t changed, if only the keys to the kingdom hadn’t been handed over to the freethinkers and decadents of the sixties—then both Hollywood and the world would be a better, safer, happier place. There’s no slur delivered more bitterly by Cliff and Rick than “hippie,” and their narrow but intense experiences in the course of the film are set up to bear out the absolute aptness of their hostility.

Tarantino’s love letter to a lost cinematic age is one that, seemingly without awareness, celebrates white-male stardom (and behind-the-scenes command) at the expense of everyone else. Tarantino has a history of seeming to enjoy planting racial slurs in the mouths of his characters, and “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is no different. In one set piece, backstage at the studio, Rick finds himself seated alongside an ultra-ambitious, ultra-professional child actor (Julia Butters), a girl who makes Rick feel somewhat ashamed of his lackadaisical approach to his craft. Rick derives inspiration from his earnest young co-star, which results in his improvising a line that the show’s director (Nicholas Hammond) greatly admires—and features a slur against Mexicans. (At another moment, early in the film, in a parking lot, when Rick recognizes that his career is in decline, he begins to shed tears, and Cliff lends him a pair of sunglasses: “Don’t let the Mexicans see you crying.”) “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is the second movie within a year to feature that slur prominently; the other, Clint Eastwood’s “ The Mule ,” also displays the devastating real-world oppressions that Mexicans endure as a result of white Americans’ racist attitudes. By contrast, Tarantino delivers a ridiculously white movie, complete with a nasty dose of white resentment; the only substantial character of color, Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), is played, in another set piece, as a haughty parody, and gets dramatically humiliated in a fight with Cliff.

Anthony Lane reviews “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood,” in the August 5 & 12, 2019, issue of the magazine.

Cliff, a real-life battle-hardened hero, finds little application for his talents in civilian life. Though he is Rick’s stunt double—someone who appears onscreen in the guise of Rick—it’s actually Rick, a faux hero, who appears onscreen as Cliff’s double, someone who pretends to do the physically courageous things that Cliff really does. “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is a tribute to the people behind the scenes and below the line, the ones who secretly infuse movies with their practical knowledge, life experience, and athletic feats. In that regard, it’s a movie that John Ford already made: “ The Wings of Eagles ” (1957), the drama of Frank (Spig) Wead, a hero of naval aviation who, after being disabled in an accident, becomes a novelist and a screenwriter (including for Ford, who dramatizes himself in the movie as a director named John Dodge). Wead is played by Ford’s favorite tragic hero, John Wayne—and Ford doesn’t stint on the tragedy, the physical agony, and the wreckage of family life that are central to the hero’s experience.

There’s no physical agony for the heroes in “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood,” even if a scene of Cliff shirtless reveals an impressive array of scars.Tarantino’s depiction of marital domesticity is as bitter and burdensome as any macho adolescent might envision it. Cliff’s unhappy marriage isn’t depicted as a site of conflict but as his endurance of the shrill and belittling rage of a shrew. As for Rick, he eventually marries, and it’s emblematic of Tarantino’s vision of marriage that Rick’s foreign wife, Francesca (Lorenza Izzo), is another object of parody; with her fancy clothing and her truckload of luggage, her sole function in the film is to provide Rick with the burden of a dependent.

The movie’s most prominent female character, Sharon Tate (Robbie), is given even less substance; she is depicted as an ingenuous Barbie doll who ditzily admires herself onscreen. In “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood,” Tarantino reserves the glory moments of actorly allure, swagger, and charisma for male actors: when Tate blithely admires herself, it’s for the role of the “klutz” who falls on her ass for Dean Martin’s amusement and titillation. There’s a peculiar sidebar, when Cliff picks up a teen-age hitchhiker who calls herself Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), who’s actually a member of the Manson Family, and drives her to the Spahn Movie Ranch (unbeknownst to him, of course, the Family’s hideout). But the emblematic moment of that sequence takes place en route, when she offers Cliff a blow job—and Cliff distinguishes himself from Hollywood predators by asking her age, demanding to see proof of it on her driver’s license, and gallantly declaring that he doesn’t intend to go to prison for “poontang.”

For all its imaginative verve—and grace notes of snappy performance, gestures, and inflections—“Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is a strangely inert movie. Tarantino has become a nudnik filmmaker, who grabs a viewer by the lapel and says—and says and says—what’s on his mind. If his central point is that he loves Hollywood, then there aren’t any facts or images that can pass through to suggest that there might be something not to love. Tarantino’s images are busy, at times even showy, yet relentlessly functional, merely decorating his doctrinal delivery, as in some bravura crane shots (such as one that carries over the screen of the drive-in to follow Cliff to his trailer) and some long-running tracking shots (such as the one in which Rick meets the child actor on a studio backlot) that display the power of the Hollywood system without its expressive energy or symbolic resonance. His movie is filled with the pop-culture iconography of the time—a soundtrack of Top Forty needle-drops, vintage radio commercials for such products as Tanya tanning oil and Heaven Sent perfume; movie marquees and posters for films of the day; and some fashions of the times. But Tarantino voids those artifacts of substance—of political protest, social conflict, any sense of changing mores.

Tarantino never suggests the existence of a world outside of Hollywood fantasy, one with ideas, desires, demands, and crises that roil the viewers of movies, if not their makers. He rigorously and systematically keeps the outside world outside of the movie’s purview until, in the final twist, his fiction intersects with history in a way that only hammers his doctrine home. “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is about a world in which the characters, with Tarantino’s help, fabricate the sublime illusions that embody their virtues and redeem their failings—and then perform acts of real-life heroism to justify them again. Its star moments have a nearly sacred aura, in their revelation of the heroes that, he suggests, really do walk among us; his closed system of cinematic faith bears the blinkered fanaticism of a cult.

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Movie Reviews

Tarantino's turned-on, tuned-in tinseltown: 'once upon a time in ... hollywood'.

Chris Klimek

A bloody business: Cliff (Brad Pitt), Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Marvin (Al Pacino) meet at Musso & Frank in Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood. Andrew Cooper/Columbia Pictures hide caption

A bloody business: Cliff (Brad Pitt), Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Marvin (Al Pacino) meet at Musso & Frank in Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood.

Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's florid, sun-bleached, la-la land fantasia, would be a groovy trip of a movie in any era. But only now, with virtually the entire industry consumed by Disney's circle-of-life pop-cultural recycling algorithm — a vast, unsympathetic intelligence more larcenous and self-referential than 1,000 Tarantinos working in round-the-clock shifts — does it look like an essential one. Pulp Fiction, Tarantino's sophomore feature, hit with such seismic force 25 years ago that pleading its unimportance became a stubborn pre-Reddit subreddit of film criticism even as imitations proliferated. Now, QT is one of only a fistful of filmmakers who can still get studios to commit substantial resources ($90 million this time) to original screenplays. And lest his new film's conspicuous meditations on aging— and on the disappearing border between the big and small screens — elude you, he's just about done.

Tarantino's ninth and, he says, penultimate picture is a languid Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-ing of the 1969 murders of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring and three others by members of the Manson cult, told mostly from the point of view of Tate's fictitious next-door neighbor. That would be fading TV star Rick Dalton (a career-best Leonardo DiCaprio), whose alcoholism contributed to the cancellation of his network western Bounty Law some years back. (Of course we get clips from the show; of course they're hilarious.) Since then, he's been reduced to sporadic villain-of-the-week gigs.

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Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, sharing a title card and a pay grade with Leo) was Rick's stunt double, but now he's just his driver, cheerleader, errand boy and professional best pal. While DiCaprio makes Rick a bundle of human-scale neuroses, unmanned by the realization of his obsolescence, Pitt paints Cliff as a more laconic figure — a bronzed, ageless, sentient pair of sunglasses who can stand up to Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) in a fight, declines sex with an underage hitchhiker (Margaret Qualley) on purely legal grounds, oh and also he just maybe murdered his wife.

That last bit is one of a few threads Tarantino leaves wantonly unsnipped. For yea, he shall fear no thinkpiece — not even the ones that have already appeared bemoaning the fact that Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate is present here more a set element than a character. Her most revealing act is to introduce herself to the staff of the Bruin Theater in Westwood when she decides to take in a matinee of the Dean Martin spy farce The Wrecking Crew , in which she has a supporting role. Robbie-as-Tate's face lights up every time the audience laughs at her pratfalls or applauds after her fight scene for which Lee trained her. Lee was indeed the credited "Karate Advisor" on The Wrecking Crew, but sorting out how much of the showbiz mise-en-scene here is fact and how much is, how you say, legend is a big part of what makes this one even more seductive to New Hollywood-era cinephiles than, well, every other Tarantino joint.

The bulk of the 160-minute picture takes place six months before the tragedy, a period during which Rick watches Tate and her famous husband Roman Polanski (hot off Rosemary's Baby ) with envy. He's preparing for yet another bad-guy TV part, while pondering an invitation to go make Spaghetti Westerns with Sergio, um, Corbucci. ( Lancer, the TV show he's guest-starring on, was real; the Italian movies he's mulling — one of them called Kill Me Quick, Ringo, Said the Gringo — are not. Pity.)

The biggest chunk of the narrative unfolds as Rick fights his way through a grueling day on the set, buoyed by a lunchtime conversation with his 8-year-old co-star (an astonishing Julia Butters), while Cliff gives that hitchhiker a ride back to George Spahn's movie ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains. Tarantino shoots the show-within-the-show like it's one of his films, with long takes and elaborate camera moves. TV can do this now; in 1969, it was decades off. Meanwhile, Cliff's walk across a chalky patch of canyon to check up on his old pal George (Bruce Dern, in a one-scene part that would've been Burt Reynolds', had he lived) while surrounded by feral flower children becomes the most suspenseful scene in a movie this year.

It's a hilarious and enveloping fable replete with all the Tarantino hallmarks —stellar performances, instantly memorable dialogue, an expertly culled playlist of songs that (mostly) haven't been neutered by overexposure, long intervals of tension punctuated by brief but sickening violence. But there's something new to the mix this time. Not maturity, heaven forfend. It's more like tranquility, as the 56-year-old auteur reflects upon the passing of his era. There's an axle-grinding shift that occurs deep into the picture, but for 135 minutes or so it's the most relaxed and elegant filmmaking of Tarantino's career.

Also the most personal. Once Upon a Time is set in February and August of 1969, when Tarantino was six and seven years old. This time, his characters talk about '60s movies and music and TV shows because it's the '60s and because they work in showbiz, not because they're alienated, out-of-time obsessives in the present day. With the help of regular cinematographer Robert Richardson (who shot Oliver Stone's best movies, and all of Tarantino's since Kill Bill ) and production designer Barbara Ling (who did, uh, Joel Schumacher's two disavowed Batman films), he has ushered us all into the neon-lit Los Angeles of his memory, back when the 101 was full of Cadillacs and Buicks and they all spent more time moving than idling.

In the gimmicky way Tarantino peoples his appealing imaginary characters among the Tates and the Polanskis and the Bruce Lees and the Steve McQueens, Once Upon a Time owes a little something to Forrest Gump, the cloying, boomer-revering megahit that stole what should have been Pulp Fiction's best picture Oscar (and QT's directing Oscar) way back when. You might say Tarantino's oeuvre is like a box of chocolates: Some of them are more bitter and unpleasant than others, but they're all still chocolate. Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood might be the tastiest one in the box. Top three, anyway. Let's revisit the subject in another 25 years.

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood Review

Quentin tarantino's latest film explores the showbiz of yesteryear, the l.a. of 1969, and the manson family..

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Gallery

Quentin Tarantino doesn’t quite deliver a grand slam with his penultimate feature film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, a languid but interesting exploration of a particular time and place and a loving ode to the pop culture that informed his particular sensibilities as an artist. But it also doesn’t always land as viscerally or emotionally as it could have, and it never quite develops Sharon Tate as more than an idea. Still, the respective performances of DiCaprio and Pitt and the film’s meticulous attention to period detail are all great and keep you invested in where this cruise around Tinseltown will ultimately take you.

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Once upon a time in hollywood.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 52 Reviews
• Kids Say 67 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Tarantino's entertaining but violent movietown epic.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- an intense crime movie written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie -- is set in 1969 and tangentially involves the Manson Family. As usual for Tarantino, there are scenes of extremely shocking…

Why Age 17+?

Extremely graphic, shocking violence in a few scenes. Guns are drawn and fired.

Extremely strong, frequent language, including "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "

Scene at the Playboy Mansion shows women dressed up as Playboy bunnies. Revealin

Frequent social drinking, some secret drinking. Characters get drunk in more tha

Several vintage 1960s brands shown, more for flavor than for advertising: Wheati

Any Positive Content?

No clear messages, but movie offers a chance to think about movies and history a

No real role models, though characters are interesting, likable. But they're als

Violence & Scariness

Extremely graphic, shocking violence in a few scenes. Guns are drawn and fired. A dog viciously attacks humans. A man smashes a woman's face into a wall over and over; gory, smashed face shown. Injured character screams maniacally, firing a gun into the air. One character repeatedly punches another, with profusely bleeding nose, blood spurting. Characters are burned with a flamethrower, both in a "movie" and in "life." Martial arts fighting, with a character thrown against a car. Dialogue about a man killing his wife. Struggling rat caught in a trap.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Extremely strong, frequent language, including "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "bulls--t," "c--k," "p---y," "poontang," "pr--k," "a--hole," "ass," "d--k," "goddamn," "hell," "loser," and "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation). Racial slur "beaner."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Scene at the Playboy Mansion shows women dressed up as Playboy bunnies. Revealing outfits. A young woman offers a man oral sex. Somewhat explicit sex-related talk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Frequent social drinking, some secret drinking. Characters get drunk in more than one scene. A character wonders whether he's an alcoholic (he's unable to drive due to too many drunk-driving tickets). Near-constant cigarette smoking. Character smokes a cigarette dipped in LSD. He goes on a drug trip, but only his reactions are shown; the trip itself isn't shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Several vintage 1960s brands shown, more for flavor than for advertising: Wheaties, Velveeta, Wonder Bread, Kraft Mac & Cheese, a Champion T-shirt, etc.

Positive Messages

No clear messages, but movie offers a chance to think about movies and history and the way movies can change the things that really happened. It also asks question of whether violence in movies and TV has any connection to real-life violence.

Positive Role Models

No real role models, though characters are interesting, likable. But they're also frequently poorly behaved, drinking too much or having no real responsibility.

Parents need to know that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- an intense crime movie written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Leonardo DiCaprio , Brad Pitt , and Margot Robbie -- is set in 1969 and tangentially involves the Manson Family. As usual for Tarantino, there are scenes of extremely shocking, graphic violence, including a woman's face being smashed repeatedly against the wall, vicious dog attacks, characters getting burned by a flamethrower, punching, blood spurts, gun use, fighting, and more. Language is also very strong, with tons of uses of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "c--k," and more. There's somewhat explicit sex talk, a scene set at the Playboy Mansion, and scantily clad women. Characters drink and smoke tons of cigarettes (one tinged with acid), and one character wonders whether he might be an alcoholic. The movie is definitely mature, but it's also beautifully made, complex, funny, and smart, though it does mix up fact and fiction. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (52)
• Kids say (67)

Based on 52 parent reviews

Good story despite gruesome scenes

A pedophile's dream, what's the story.

In ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, it's 1969, and hard-drinking, fading cowboy/action star Rick Dalton ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) struggles with his career, trying to decide whether to continue playing bad guys in TV pilots or go to Italy to make Spaghetti Westerns. Cliff Booth ( Brad Pitt ), Rick's longtime stuntman, is now largely unemployable and passes the time driving Rick around and taking care of Rick's home maintenance. Living next door is rising star Sharon Tate ( Margot Robbie ), who recently married director Roman Polanski and is enjoying the response to her new movie, The Wrecking Crew . Trouble arises when Cliff picks up a hitchhiker ( Margaret Qualley ) and takes her to the Spahn Ranch, where the soon-to-be notorious Manson Family lives. And a terrible coincidence brings the cult members back to Hollywood.

Is It Any Good?

Quentin Tarantino returns, refreshed, with this funny, beautiful period piece, wrapping his story's loopy laces around movie lore and history, and mixing life and art into a cool, wild collage. With Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , Tarantino returns to Los Angeles for the first time since the Kill Bill movies, and it appears to have recharged his batteries. The film feels excited by the way cinema is imprinted in Hollywood's streets, but also the way its connected/disconnected sprawl offers any number of cool, hidden stories at any given moment. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood moves beautifully and simply, following vintage cars as they blast 1960s-era pop tunes from tinny radios.

But the roads traveled weave together in complex ways, with real history and fake history crashing up against each other, combining into what can only be cinema. As usual, Tarantino also toys with violence, both imagined and real, both direct and indirect, subverting expectations. At the center, Robbie's Sharon Tate is a little underexplored, but she at least seems sweet and smart. Rick and Cliff, meanwhile, feel like old buddies, with a comfortable shorthand and warmth between them. The combination in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is epic, exhilarating, and wildly entertaining.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 's violence . How did it make you feel? What does the movie have to say about violence in general, both in movies and in real life?

How are drinking, smoking, and drug use depicted? Are they glamorized? Are there realistic consequences? Why is that important?

What really happened to Sharon Tate and her friends? How does the movie change that? What is the movie saying about fact and fiction? History and movies?

How is sex portrayed? What values are imparted?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 26, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : December 10, 2019
• Cast : Leonardo DiCaprio , Brad Pitt , Margot Robbie
• Director : Quentin Tarantino
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Columbia Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 161 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language throughout, some strong graphic violence, drug use and sexual references
• Awards : Academy Award , BAFTA - BAFTA Winner , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : June 20, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Review: 'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood' is a fairy tale only Quentin Tarantino could tell

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” fulfills the promise of its title as a throwback fairy tale with two fictional showbiz buddies that just so happens to coincide with one of the most infamous killing sprees of the 20th century.

The iconoclastic writer/director’s stamp is all over his ninth film (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters nationwide Friday), Tarantino's signature style and humor melding with violence, a little melancholy and thought-provoking character drama. His vision of 1969 Hollywood feels authentic and alive, with a lot of that electricity running through leads Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt , plus an inspired, understated performance by Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate .

A-listers unite!  Brad Pitt, Leo DiCaprio reminisce at 'Once Upon A Time' premiere

Margot Robbie: Actress felt 'enormous sense of responsibility' portraying Sharon Tate

Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) is a famous 1950s TV cowboy and fleeting movie star whose career, by the time “Hollywood” takes place, consists mainly of guest appearances as the bad guy on any show that’ll take him. An insecure mess, Rick has a saving grace – in more ways than one – in stunt double/confidante/driver/handyman Cliff Booth (Pitt).

Cliff is a weathered, carefree dude who lives on the outskirts of town with his pit bull Brandy, though he spends a lot of time at his best pal’s snazzy Hollywood Hills estate. Rick’s next-door neighbor is Sharon, whose celebrity is rising as his is teetering downward, and she races in sports cars with her director husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and parties with the Mamas and the Papas, flitting through the good life.

Unlike with many Tarantino's films, the director leisurely sets up his characters and fills the screen with “Mannix” episodes, Paul Revere & the Raiders tunes and obscure pieces of pop culture of the time. With an obsessive sense of detail, the result is an L.A. where fiction and reality blur together to form a magnificent locale only Tarantino could concoct.

The plot full-on moseys for a good two-thirds of the film, as Rick is on the cusp of a nuclear meltdown while filming a Western TV pilot that's key to prolonging what's left of his career, Sharon watches her new film “The Wrecking Crew” (with footage of the real Tate) with an audience and feeds off their energy, and Cliff has a strange episode when he picks up hitchhiking Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), part of the oddball hippie family of Charles Manson (Damon Herriman).

Tate, Manson and the family’s stories ultimately do sync up with Rick and Cliff’s, and fiery mayhem ensues in a third act that fully embraces being a Tarantino film. The differences are so striking between that and the exploratory meandering in the first part that they almost feel like two different movies, though at least the main characters’ arcs all feel earned by the end.

“Hollywood” is chock-full of big-name cameos. Among them, Al Pacino shows up as an agent trying to convince Rick to make Italian Westerns, and Kurt Russell as the narrator matches the same grizzled machismo of the movie’s main dudes.

Like Russell, both DiCaprio and Pitt are part of Tarantino’s company of regulars, and DiCaprio is especially fantastic as a fading star hanging on for dear life – this and “The Revenant” maintain his current run of career-defining efforts . Similarly, Pitt is able to add quite a few layers to steely and cool Cliff, who’s much more of an enigma than he seems.

Robbie’s Sharon is definitely a supporting role but also the film's angelic spirit, a sunny soul dealing with her own issues who’s tied inextricably to surrounding figures. Her real-life fate hangs over the film like a specter and offers an interesting built-in tension Tarantino uses to fuel an entertaining yet wanting entry in his infamous oeuvre.

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George Clooney May Be Right to Be Annoyed with Quentin Tarantino

George Clooney recently admitted to being a “little irritated” with Quentin Tarantino’s thoughts on his career. He could have a point.

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They might have played brothers almost 30 years ago on the set of From Dusk Till Dawn , but it’s fair to say the sun has gone down on George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino ’s camaraderie. Clooney’s shots across Tarantino’s bow are making the rounds, too, after the actor sat down with his frequent co-star Brad Pitt for a GQ cover story interview .

During the careers-spanning conversation, the subject of actors and auteurs came up, including how each leading man has enjoyed long-lasting relationships with some of the greatest auteurs of their generation. For Clooney that can include Steven Soderbergh and the Coen Brothers, while for Pitt it immediately brings to mind David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino. QT has indeed used Pitt in two of his best films, Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood . Yet it was while GQ brought up that latter union that Clooney revealed he’s recently been frustrated by comments apparently made by Tarantino.

“Listen, I did a movie with Quentin,” Clooney pointed out. “He played my brother.” When Pitt remembered that and said he thought Tarantino was “pretty good” in the film, Clooney elaborated: “He was okay in it.”

Clooney eventually aired his full grievance: “Quentin said some shit about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him. He did some interview where he was naming movie stars, and he was talking about you and somebody else, and then this guy goes, ‘Well, what about George?’ He goes, ‘He’s not a movie star.’ And then he literally said something like, ‘Name me a movie since the millennium.’ And I was like, ‘ Since the millennium? ’ That’s kind of my whole fucking career. So now I’m like, all right dude, fuck off. I don’t mind giving him shit. He gave me shit.”

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Depending on your point-of-view, it’s either amusing or a real shame to see two of the biggest Gen-X talents in Hollywood spat like this. Perhaps it’s not a surprise, though, given just a year ago Clooney not-so-affectionately recalled with a pretty dead-on Tarantino impression an interview they did for From Dusk Till Dawn where Tarantino claimed he and Clooney genuinely looked like brothers.

Incredible Tarantino impression by Clooney here pic.twitter.com/P7xpkS0lg8 — John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) August 5, 2023

As of press time, we were not able to find the interview Clooney is referring to in regards to Tarantino “giving him shit” about movie star bonafides. However, the success and trajectory of careers, both among actors and directors, is obviously a fixation for Tarantino, who mused at length in his first book of film criticism, Cinema Speculation , about the choices made by the likes of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and Warren Beatty, which helped define the New Hollywood cinema Tarantino so adores. And of course Tarantino’s obsession with a “clean” 10-film oeuvre is why the director insists his next movie will be his last.

So if Tarantino really dismissed Clooney’s status as a movie star in the 21st century, Clooney has some right to be ticked.

While we wouldn’t draw a wall between “the millennium” and today, it is true that Clooney has generally avoided the kind of sure-bet blockbusters that replenish a movie star’s brand cache since about 2007—the year he starred in his third and final dance with Danny Ocean in Ocean’s Thirteen . However, the most interesting thing about Clooney’s career on a macro level is how he parlayed that relatively late-found celebrity and fame into a rarified movie career where instead of making “one for you and one for them,” Clooney’s spent nearly 20 years making all of them for himself.

To be clear, Clooney’s career goes back well before the 21st century, with his first TV appearance being a walk-on role in the forgotten 1978 miniseries, Centennial . But his status as a movie star A-lister probably wasn’t cemented until around Y2K. Before that Clooney became a bonafide television star and face of NBC’s 1994 fall season when he turned into the breakout on ER at the age of 33. 

He quickly parlayed that into some really interesting film work, including as the lead opposite Tarantino in the QT-scripted, but Robert Rodriguez-directed, From Dusk Till Dawn . Still easily the best “grindhouse” movie either filmmaker ever produced, Dusk allowed Clooney to embody the “be cool” ethos of ‘90s era Tarantino chic.

Around the same time, though, Clooney was also saying yes to every project that came his way. And these ran the gamut from interesting like Three Kings (which behind-the-scenes was still a nightmare for Clooney after he got into a physical fisticuff with the film’s volatile and allegedly toxic director, David O. Russell) to… Batman & Robin .

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So it might be fair to say Clooney didn’t fully establish himself as a full A-lister until The Perfect Storm in 2000, as pure a star vehicle as there could be in those early days of audiences still being wowed by CGI wonderment . Soon afterward Clooney basically defined what the Gen-X rat pack was alongside Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Casey Affleck, and more in Ocean’s Eleven (2001). The image has stuck since Clooney is still partnering with Pitt on Apple TV+’s upcoming Wolves (hence the GQ interview).

So yes, Clooney’s ascendancy and perhaps peak as a box office draw was in the 2000s, albeit we’d point out it was true throughout the decade and not just “the millennium.” Yet what Tarantino appears to be carelessly ignoring is how adroitly Clooney was able to pivot something as fleeting and momentarily ephemeral as fame into a rich career that has kept Clooney not only at the top of the Hollywood hierarchy, but constantly engaged with interesting and challenging work.

For the record, Clooney again has the auteurs he collaborates with frequently, and we’d argue there have been few as entertainingly fruitful in this century as Clooney’s rapport with the Coen Brothers. Beginning in 2000’s pitch perfect riff on Deep South folklore and tall tales, O Brother, Where Art Thou? , Clooney and the Coens have so enjoyed developing what they christened their “trilogy of idiots” between O Brother , Intolerable Cruelty (2003), and Burn After Reading (2007) that they went ahead and added a fourth part to this triumvirate in the severely underrated Hail, Caesar! (2016).

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Beyond that, Clooney used his immediate hard power and bankability in the 2000s to pursue the type of serious, adult-oriented dramas one imagines Tarantino might appreciate still getting made in Hollywood, even if he might have his own views on the specific films. Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton continues to grow in esteem as a newfound classic—unfortunately because its cynicism about late stage American capitalism has become a reality. Meanwhile The Descendants (2011) is one of Alexander Payne’s tenderest and funniest films which won Jim Rash and Nat Faxon screenplay Oscars; and of course alongside Sandra Bullock, Clooney lending his movie star status to Alfonso Cuarón helped get the risky and artful high-concept Gravity (2013) off the ground.

Clooney has also shown a lot more interest in his own directorial career over the last 20 or so years. Admittedly, we’d argue his only true great film behind the camera was curiously his second: 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck. It certainly has aged better than the movie that beat it for Best Picture that year ( Crash ). But despite the rather disappointing results from his subsequent directorial efforts, including The Ides of March , The Monuments Men , The Midnight Sky , and The Boys in the Boat , the fact remains Clooney is using his clout and stardom to get adult-skewing dramas that otherwise would be ignored greenlit.

The fascinating thing about Clooney’s career isn’t the number of box office hits he’s produced or even necessarily how many classics he appeared in. It’s that he was able to claim conventional stardom in his middle-age with a salt-and-pepper Cary Grant charisma and then cleverly curate that into a career by making only the films he’s personally interested in. We admit that the best in the last decade are when someone else is directing, but Clooney has remained a “kingmaker,” both in Hollywood and apparently beyond it , while eschewing the type of franchise/blockbuster compromises many of his contemporaries have had to settle for.

Other than a self-deprecating cameo in last year’s The Flash , he’s avoided the rise of superhero movies and legacy sequels, not even showing up when they dusted off his own IP with Ocean Eight (2018). Unlike Tom Cruise, he isn’t reinventing himself by doing increasingly insane stunts with characters he created decades earlier, nor is he “passing the baton” by showing up for a ton of blue screen work.

He’s managed to keep the kind New Hollywood career the likes of Tarantino admire in an era where Hollywood belongs to the capes. That’s some movie star shit if you ask us.

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

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Close to the climax of “ Once Upon a Mattress ,” now revived on Broadway for the second time, Princess Winnifred ( Sutton Foster ) has reached the end of her rope. After the frustrations of the preceding two hours or so, Winnifred, the beleaguered would-be bride to a feckless prince, screws up her face and declares “What are you, some kind of nut?”

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Foster is an eminently physical performer — her tap dance in the 2011 revival of “Anything Goes,” televised from the Tonys stage, is by now the stuff of legend. But she’s a precision artist, and playing a character who is by her nature sloppy and goofy doesn’t come naturally. “What are you, some kind of nut?” is a poorly written line, but it’s also one that Foster is too crisp by half to sell. 

We feel her trying, though, and this effort gives “Once Upon a Mattress” an unsettled, nervous-making quality. (A key set piece in which Winnifred, hungry and unaccustomed to bounty, stuffs her face to bursting with grapes has an anxious, needy aspect — pushing toward laughter that the writing isn’t earning. It lands closer to “Fear Factor” than to musical theater.) Other performers fare better — Urie, playing his prince’s innocence big and broad, does well, and Gasteyer’s upright bearing and clear diction allow her to make a meal of the queen’s vanity and delusion.

These traits — a prince’s naivete, a queen’s grandeur — might seem to give “Once Upon a Mattress” a reason to be. At its best, in fleeting moments, the show feels like a “Fractured Fairy Tale” of the sort that “Rocky and Bullwinkle” popularized around the time this play was first mounted. One feels the desire, on the part of the production, to say something about children’s stories, to develop or complicate the myths we learn in our youth. “Into the Woods” is an impossible comparison, but an ounce of that show’s curiosity about the stories we tell would have been welcome.

Instead, there’s a certain stubbornness to this show’s insistence on trying to get by on sheer nerve, its refusal to try anything beyond the realm of physical comedy (through which Foster will try everything). In its staging and production, it’s of the highest order — the costumes, by Andrea Hood, wowed me, for instance. (I was particularly partial to the gaudily looping sleeves on the garment worn by the Jester — an outfit with more indulgence and wit than anything in the script.) And the show finally cannot overcome the casting of Foster, a game and fantastic performer who simply can’t find her way into a character who’s all sloppy id. Like a legume under your mattress, this casting is a small thing that, as the evening wears on, comes to feel massive. 

Hudson Theater; 968 seats; $179 top. Opened August 12, 2024. Reviewed Aug. 9. Running time: TWO HOURS, 15 MIN.

• Production: A Seaview, Creative Partners Productions, Jenny Gersten & Half Zip Productions, Hugo Six, Cohen-Gutterman Productions, Boy Boyett, Stephen Byrd, Kate Cannova, Pam Hurst-Della Pietra & Stephen Della Pietra, Nicole Eisenberg, LD Entertainment, Jay & Mary Sullivan, Richard Batchelder & Brady Brim-DeForest, Sharon Azrieli, Adam Cohen, Steve Peters, Trafalgar Entertainment, Dennis Trunfio, Mark Weinstein, Acton Carter Deignan Willman Productions, Crumhale Taylor Productions, Jamie deRoy & Paula Kaminsky Davis, Howard Overby Rubin Fink Productions, Under the Mattress, New York City Center presentation, with executive producers Sue Wagner, John Johnson and Jillian Robbins, of the New York City Centers Encores! production of a musical in two acts with music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer and book by Jay Thompson, Barer and Dean Fuller.
• Crew: Directed by Lear de Bessonet. Choreographed by Lorin Latarro. Sets, David Zinn; costumes, Andrea Hood; lights, Justin Townsend; sound, Kai Harada; orchestrations, Bruce Coughlin; music direction, AnnBritt du Chateau; musical supervision, Mary Mitchell Campbell; production stage manager, Cody Renard Richard.
• Cast: Sutton Foster, Michael Urie, Brooks Ashmanskas, Daniel Breaker, Will Chase, Nikki Renee Daniels, David Patrick Kelly, Kara Lindsay, Ana Gasteyer, Daniel Beeman, Wendi Bergamini, Taylor Marie Daniel, Cicily Daniels, Ben Davis, Sheldon Henry, Oyoyo Joi, Amanda LaMotte, Sarah Michelle Lindsey, Michael Olaribigbe, Adam Roberts, Jeffrey Schecter, Darius Wright, Richard Riaz Yoder.

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'Vaazha': Fathers and children try to understand each other in this slice-of-life comedy | Review

How did the all-purpose banana plantain, or 'Vaazha,' come to represent the modern-day slacker in Kerala? It's a mystery that remains unsolved. In 'Vaazha', starring Siju Sunny, Amith Mohan Rajeswari, Joemon Jyothir, Anuraj OB, and Saaf, this metaphor comes to life through the struggles of five aimless young people burdened by their parents' expectations. The film explores the familiar yet emotional themes of youthful angst, anger, and inner turmoil of young men. Directed by Anand Menen, the movie offers a thoughtful examination of what it means to be a 'Vaazha' and the challenges that come with parenting one.

Written by Vipin Das, of Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey fame, the movie tells the tale of five slackers, all of whom grew into being friends from being in the same mental space. Just like in his last outing, Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil, Vipin Das hits the right spots in getting the attitude of the five slackers right, providing much of the humour in the first half. The main cast provides an honestly good performance, which makes a likely case they were slackers too once. Joemon Jyothir, with his impeccable sense of timing, stands out among the quintet, delivering the peak moments of humour, especially in the scenes with his father, played by Noby Marcose.

But as the young men grow from the carefree environments of their schools and colleges and take their first steps in adulting, the movie shifts tonally and this is where Vipin's script falters. The film does touch on the lives of those who find success, but these narratives feel a bit flat, lacking the depth and definition needed to make them truly resonate.

At one point, two love stories happen simultaneously, only to disappear with the same energy they came in. The stories go so wildly in the second half, trying to accommodate different points of view that by the time the movie ends, you're left puzzled, wondering what was the whole point.

Despite its shortcomings, Vaazha keeps you hooked to the screen with its moments of humour, which feels structurally similar to the kind of humour content one sees on social media. The advantage here is the casting of internet sensation, Hashiree and his friends, whose mere presence cracks a smile on your face without you even knowing it. The film provides these brief moments, peppered throughout the film and the icing on top is Basil Joseph as an empathetic police officer in an extended cameo, doing exactly what was meant to do.

Apart from the main actors, the movie also tries to show the side of their fathers who go through societal humiliation and a sense of hopelessness. The seasoned casting here provided much stability in the emotional scenes, pushing the youngsters to try and match the same level of depth in their performances.

Vaazha is the story of both those who struggle to succeed in life and who struggle to meet their parents' expectations.  But while the latter confront their demons long after they establish themselves, the former find themselves stuck in limbo, wondering where to take the next step. This could be what Anand Menen struggled with as well. But for all its faults, if you ever find yourself catching a slacker mood, pop this on your TV, and hopefully, you'll come out laughing out loud, to say the least.

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