Springtime for Inglorious Basterds - Democratic Underground

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Thu Aug-27-09 09:37 AM
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Springtime for Inglorious Basterds

Edited on Thu Aug-27-09 09:39 AM by Daveparts still

Springtime for Inglorious Basterds
By David Glenn Cox

If you loved the film "Pulp Fiction" then you are in for a surprise with Quentin Tarantino’s latest film "Inglorious Basterds," or what should more aptly be named Inglorious Pulp. It borrows the format from "Pulp Fiction," with chapters, but leaves the rest behind. For some reason, with allied armies already on the beaches in Normandy, they choose a group of Jewish American soldiers who are then dropped behind German lines to sow fear amongst the German soldiers. It's obvious that with half a million men already on the beaches that a half dozen commandos will just scare the crap out of the German Army.

The "Basterds" brutally murder prisoners, ala Dick Cheney, to gather intelligence. Their leader has a thick, overplayed Southern accent that while he looks a little like a young Marlon Brando he sounds like young Jim Varney. Know what I mean, Vern? While interrogating a prisoner he crushes his skull using what all allied commandos carried into battle in France, a baseball bat! That's just dumb; a tree branch, a rifle butt, a big rock, anything but a baseball bat. In France? To their credit they at least used a wooden bat, but as the film went on an aluminum bat wouldn’t have been out of the question.

A lone surviving German soldier is marked with a swastika carved into his forehead by the "Basterds." This escaping Nazi Private is then taken directly to see Adolf Hitler to explain about what had happened to him at the hands of these dangerous commandos. Hitler is visibly shaken. Allied invasions, round the clock bombings, a collapsing Russian front, and now, oh God, no, swastika-carving commandos with baseball bats!

That is just the beginning. The movie requires a total suspension of belief as the "Basterds" become involved in a plot to blow up a cinema filled with Nazi big whigs in Paris. Which ones, you might ask. All of them, every Nazi leader in the Third Reich will come to Paris in the middle of a war, a war that they are losing, for a movie premier! Sure, why not.

There are two plots. One, Operation Keno created by the OSS, and another by an allegedly teenage girl who owns the cinema where the film will premiere. It wasn’t until later that I learned this woman was supposed to be a teenager as the thought never once crossed my mind while I was watching the film, which is more than I can say for the producers. All of the women in the film wear their hair down and straight, which if you were to watch any period films or newsreels you would know that would have made them stand out like Grace Jones at a prayer meeting.

But ‘tis a small matter to carp about such minor details in a film with this much wrong with it. After the British agents are exposed and killed by the Gestapo, the "Basterds" step in to play the role of an Italian film crew with a double agent German film star. My flesh cringes as the Jim Varney character says, “Ciao” and “Areviderchi,” Vern.

Surprise, surprise, they are captured by the Gestapo; but you know what? The Gestapo officer is a traitor, too! He orders the "Basterds" to get their leader on the radio to make a deal. Then the Gestapo officer proceeds to run down a list of his demands that include a home, a pension, a Congressional Metal of Honor, asking for everything except a pair of Eleanor Roosevelt’s panties. Of course the allies, being prudent men, instantly agree.

The theater is decorated like the Nuremberg Rallies, blood-red standard Nazi flags are everywhere and the walls are adorned with huge, golden German eagles because this is a movie theater and we are going to turn down the lights. All of the Nazi hierarchy are in the theater and for security they brought along two sentries to guard the opera boxes. No soldiers outside, none back stage, none guarding the front or back doors.

The teenager has made her own film and spliced it on to the end of the German film because if the Germans are too stupid to guard their own Fuhrer then they are too stupid to guard the film. The film clip is the cue for the teen’s lover and theater projectionist to set fire to the theater along with her aunt and uncles' collection of three hundred flammable, nitrate films. Now somehow, without each having any knowledge of the other's plots, the "Basterds" begin setting off bombs and opening fire as if on queue on the unguarded Nazi hierarchy.

Not since Mel Brooks “Springtime for Hitler” has there been a worse-made Nazi production. With every plot twist I imagined the writer with a huge pile of cocaine in front of him going, "Snort! And you know what happens then? Hitler picks up his cell phone to call Eva Braun, no, wait."

I doubt if Tarantino could have made a worse film if he had tried because this film has all the hallmarks of not trying. It is to World War Two movies what "Beach Blanket Bingo" was to teenage reality. I didn’t just want my money back, I wanted the two hours of my life back. So, if a believable plot scenario isn’t that important to you, and continuity to you means not wetting your pants, you might just like this film. “The Producers” was a funnier version of the Nazis, but not by much.