Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood Parent Guide

Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), have been struggling to find good roles since the long-running western “Bounty Law” ended. Now, the best Rick can get is an offer from seedy producer Marvin Schwarzs (Al Pacino) to work in Italian westerns. At the same time, a group of hippies have been hitchhiking around L.A., and Cliff realizes they’ve taken up residence at an old film set, selling horse rides to tourists and taking hard drugs. Meanwhile, actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her husband Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha) have moved in next door to Rick and are learning to love the city. When these worlds collide, though, the consequences could be murderous…

Quentin Tarantino has long been hailed as a fabulous writer and director, but this film favors his directing over his writing. The dialogue is still fast, funny, and laden with all the profanity it can possibly hold, but the story is paced inconsistently, and the multiple narratives strain its cohesion. Tring to balance three distinct (but still connected) stories is difficult, and sometimes the movie focuses too much or too little on one or the other. I think Tarantino did a much better job with the split stories in Pulp Fiction, which more aptly connected its disparate threads into satisfying conclusions.

The directing is as good as ever. Tarantino’s mastery of the mise-en-scene completely sells the setting. It doesn’t feel like a soundstage or a green-screen or a studio backlot. The film feels more lived-in and authentic than almost any other recent movie set in the 1960’s, and a lot of that comes down to Tarantino’s selection of costumes, props, and gorgeous sets. The setting is almost its own character, and the film’s vibe is a sort of demented counterpoint to La La Land. Tarantino’s view of L.A. is clearly affectionate, but much darker and more malicious than that light-hearted musical. Everything you see, both subtle and obvious, speaks to the grisly death of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and what Hunter S. Thompson called “the high-water mark” of the culture wars of the 1960’s, where the hippie-wave broke and receded.

The acting also excels, although with a cast like this, it would be surprising if it didn’t. Brad Pitt exudes so much charm and charisma throughout, he could bottle and sell the stuff. I think it’s his performance that really grounds the picture. Cliff’s character holds a lot of plot threads together, and without Pitt selling that complexity, a good chunk of the film would be at risk of falling apart. Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie are also captivating, and both capture very different vibes. They’re both playing actors, but actors with different careers and hugely different personalities.

Is this a film suitable for family viewing? Absolutely not. I doubt Tarantino will ever make a film you’d want to watch with your grandparents in the room, let alone your kids. Constant profanity tends to have that effect. But as Tarantino films go, this is probably the least violent (which isn’t to say it isn’t very violent), and if you want an introduction to the filmmaker, this might be a good place to start before wading into the deep-end with the much more graphic and frequent violence in his other movies. I don’t think this is his strongest work, but it’s a satisfying film with all his usual hallmarks, even if it would have been more satisfying with a run time about half an hour shorter.