Review Detail

While the original was, to my mind, an overlong and mishandled mess of a film with enormous charm to spare, this edit gets a lot closer to the period charm of a couple of dopey guys trying to eke out a living as their sun sets in Hollywood. Without the predictable subplots of the Manson murders (even with the ahistorical twist ending -- does Tarantino really think people haven't figured out his fanfic shtick by now?) excised, the charm of the buddy comedy at the film's heart can really shine. Unfortunately, I think this edit could use a second pass -- by cutting out Manson, a good deal of Cliff's footage has been tossed out with the serial-killer-bathwater, and it's severely missed (questionable Bruce Lee sequence aside). And inexplicably, we still have a great deal of Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate, even though her importance to the plot is now all-but-deleted.

A great concept for an edit, and much more fun (and less butt-numbing) than the original, but instead of the boiled-down buddy comedy I was hoping for, the movie is more like "a couple of days in the life of Rick Dalton and his stuntman" without a great deal of wider context or meaning.