After hearing about the controversy over the Bruce Lee scene, I held no great enthusiasm for watching this but I always knew I would get around to it eventually. As it turned out I did find the scene to be kind of insulting, but it’s a relatively minor part of the film. As for the rest of it, after a bit of a slow start, I found it thoroughly entertaining and yet bereft of any meaningful theme or deep insight.

In 1969 Rick Dalton is a Hollywood actor who fears his star is fading. Though he was once the lead in a popular Western-themed television show, his best offer nowadays is to go to Italy to make Spaghetti Westerns. Accompanying him everywhere is his best friend Cliff Booth who used to be his stunt double but now mostly works as his driver and gopher. Dalton does at least own his nice house in Hollywood and right next to him is the house of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. One day while driving Rick’s car while his boss is playing the villain in an episode of another television show, Cliff meets an attractive hitchhiker who he learns lives at the Spahn Ranch which he is familiar with as a filming location. There he sees that the place has been taken over by a community of hippies and is suspicious about what has happened to its owner. But after he manages to meet George Spahn and learns that they are indeed there with his permission, there is nothing that he can do and so he leaves.

This film reminds me most of Inglorious Basterds in being an alternative history take on the events surrounding the infamous murders perpetrated by the members of the so-called Manson Family. Dalton and Booth are fictional characters but can be interpreted as being pastiches of several real people of the era. In this reimagining on Tarantino’s part, simply by being there, the two avert the course of history. At the same time, it also serves as a nicely nostalgic trip down memory lane for what is clearly one of Tarantino’s favorite periods in time with his love of old television shows, cheese and all, and the exploitation films of the era. As befits the director’s reputation as a walking encyclopedia of film history, this film is crammed full of cultural references most of which just fly over my head. I was a little annoyed, especially at the beginning, with how the film keeps flitting rapidly from scene to scene as he tries to fit in as much as he possibly can, but I can imagine how this can be a lot of fun for film buffs to geek out over.

While I didn’t find this to be too offensive, it is a nakedly rose-tinted view of the era and that can get unseemly. Though both Dalton and Booth have their faults, overall the film affirms them as good, decent folk and even lionizes Booth as a sort of real American hero. It’s notable that the film shows Bruce Lee at his worst as an arrogant asshole while depicting a child actress on the set as having more maturity and depth than expected. As for the character of Sharon Tate, Tarantino doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with her and so merely has the camera follow as she spends a day at the cinema watching a film she herself appears in and looking pretty. Effectively her character is the MacGuffin of this film and receives no development at all.

As a creator, Tarantino is of course entitled to make movies about whatever it is that he personally loves the most and his fondness for the cinema that he grew up with is well documented. But that also makes this an especially self-indulgent project that has limited emotional impact on people outside of a select circle. It’s pretty and enjoyable enough to watch but ultimately as empty as junk food.