Sarah McEwen

The movie is what, 3 hours? And the first 2 hours 45 min was a bit ramble-y but promised either an exciting convergence of the A and B plots, or an emotional reckoning of an old star being given a second chance. We got neither and in the last 15 minutes we got excessive gore as two grown men fight and kill teenagers. Which. I should have seen coming I GUESS. And in the end none of the plots went anywhere! Nothing got wrapped up in any kind of way! Which would have been fine had the title not been once upon a time in Hollywood. You CAN'T not make it without some element of plot being wrapped up. At the very least Tarantino didn't make us watch sex. He made a very lukewarm "Not All Men" statement when he made Brad Pitt ask a teen for proof she was 18. She couldn't so they didn't, so "points" for "effort". Don't get me wrong! I love slow, meditative movies, and this would have been a great one on the evolution of movies and our place in our own creations as they start to grow too big and swallow us, but instead we got "If these two men had existed, Sharon Tate wouldn't have died but these teenagers would have instead." Did someone HAVE to die? I'm guessing not. Overall I am left unsettled by the lack of imagination when it came to ending the movie and disappointed that I paid 13$ to be disappointed. 1/5 stars, for these things equally: Margot Robbie, the first 2 hours being okay, the dog not dying, and the N word finally not being said in a Tarantino movie.