I just got back from it. Spoilers ahead, read at your own risk:
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Now, I've never enjoyed Tarantino's style. I sat through Kill Bill a couple weeks ago on Spike or whichever channel was running it, and found myself wondering WTF the hype was about?! And maybe that explains it, but although it had entertaining moments I just on the whole didn't enjoy it.
For one, it was just too slow. The previews made it look like it was going to be more of a traditional action war movie, something along the lines of The Dirty Dozen but Tarantino seems like he was going for something a little more stylistic, and IMO that detracted from the rest of the movie. There were two main plots: The Basterds themselves, and the Jewish girl Shosanna--If you're watching the trailers, blink and you'll miss her (she's the girl in one clip who LOOKS quite a bit like Diane Kruger, that is putting warpaint under her eyes). However it seems like her part actually turned out to be the MAIN plot of the film. Most of the movie centered around her plans for revenge, which ran parallel to the Basterds' own mission.
The split attention hurt, especially after it gets bogged down with the Shosanna/Zoller plot. There's VERY little of the Basterds' exploits, except for a few expository scenes or cut-aways to support dialog among other characters. In fact we go right from Raine's briefing to an audience by several German officers with Hitler talking about how the Basterds have been rampaging across the countryside. We get VERY little detail on who the Basterds are, which is really quite a waste because there were some very colorful characters that would have been interesting to get to know. As a result, I just didn't CARE about anyone in the movie.
I didn't mind the film's sort of twisted, dark comedy, but I think it would have been a much more entertaining and interesting film by eliminating the Shosanna plot altogether and focusing entirely on the Basterds. That's why everyone I know hated that almost the entire squad was killed at the end of Saving Private Ryan. We actually got to know these characters and watch them interact with each other, so by the end of the movie it actually had an impact watching them die. Here, the different characters were more or less just fodder for the handful of action scenes. Tarantino wasn't even consistent with the size of Raine's unit and how many men there actually WERE. In one scene there's about 5-6 men, including Raine and his Sgt. In another there appeared to be as many as 12. By the end there's only 6 of the Basterds--INCLUDING Raine and the Sergeant--whose fates I can account for.
Although the there was a much more logical narrative flow from beginning to end than in Kill Bill, which pretty mercilessly backtracked and jumped ahead at random in the timeline, I'm just not a fan of his editing. But I went and saw a Tarantino film, so knowing how he likes to make movies I shouldn't have been surprised.
Lastly, I have to say the pervasive Spaghetti Western music REALLY pulled me out of the movie. Awful, AWFUL music choice. I almost thought I was in the wrong theater when the movie started.
There were a few nice touches that suggests Tarantino did his homework on the period, and the costuming was first-rate, but on the whole it's not a movie I'm going to see again. I probably won't even rent it on DVD or watch it on HBO.
