Perhaps I had set my expectations too high, but Grindhouse did not live up to its hype. It could be argued that the problem lies within the film's very conceit, that you can't make a good film by following the parameters of what are commonly accepted as notoriously bad films. I don't subscribe to this particular belief, but there is a sense that the concept overwhelms the content.
First off, Grindhouse should be regarded as three films rather than two; for the sake of argument we can call them Planet Terror, Death Proof , and Death Proof 2: Been Down This Road Before. One of these films is very entertaining. One of these films is very good. And one of them is neither.
Planet Terror is, for better or for worse, exactly what is to be expected from a Robert Rodriguez film. Technically, the film is superb; the soundtrack and cinematography are outstanding, with the dust-and-scratches old filmstock effect taken just about as far as it can be without become annoying or distracting. (The missing reel gimmick is used surprisingly well for comedic effect.) Plotting and character development, however, are somewhat lacking. While Cherry (Rose McGowan) and Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) are given the most screentime, the doctors Block (Marley Shelton and Josh Brolin) are far more interesting. There's a lot of backstory left unsaid, and while it's probably meant to be myserious, it ends up mostly frustrating. Shelton in particular gives a strong performance that is part femme fatale, part damsel in distress, and part 70s exploitation-flick-heroine. There's gore galore and plenty of appropriately cheesy one-liners, but as fun a ride as Planet Terror is, it is ultimately empty and superficial.
Death Proof, however -- and this would be DP1 -- feels so right, so organic, and so damn good that if it weren't for the familiar faces and the cell phones, you'd almost believe this was a lost classic from the 70s. The aged film tricks which gave Planet Terror so much of its charm are superfluous and distracting (though thankfully used judiciously). It's as if Tarantino made his film, then suddenly remembered he was supposed to be celebrating the manner in which groundhouse films were shown rather than simply the films themselves. And I would like to suggest that Tarantino write Kurt Russell's dialogue on every subsequent film the actor makes; Tarantino's wit and phrasing and Russell's cadence and delivery are a match made in some gloriuos cinematic heaven. When his Stuntman Mike is on the screen, he electrifies it with a mixture of crass and class that would be sleazy were it not so charming.
But all good things must come to an end, and likewise, when the "twist" occurs halfway through Tarantino's segment and we begin DP2, the film begins a slow decline into mindlessness and mediocrity that sours the entire film. It starts out well enough, with another group of four headstrong young women, played uniformly well by Rosario Dawnson, Tracie Thoms, Zoe Bell, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The difference this time around is that Taratino's writing is lazy. In DP1, the girls' backstory leads to both their place (the bar) and their predicament (Stuntman Mike). In DP2, however, Tarantino uses the girls' backstory to get them where they are, but not to connect them to Stuntman Mike. His second choice of prey may be no more random than his first, but it's written as if it were, draining most of the tension. The chase is well made, and benefits immeasurably from the casting of real-life stuntwoman Bell, but fails to actively engage the audience without any real sense of context.
What bothered me the most about DP2 was Tarantino's lack of effort as a writer. One thing I had never expected him to do was transparently use a character just to move from point A to point B, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Lee is nothing more than a plot device. Even in the opening segments, it is blatantly and distractingly obvious that the other three women are being developed much more fully. Perhaps underwriting the character was intentional, in an effort to disuade audiences from saying "Wait a minute, what ever happened to Lee?" at the end of this film; if that's the case, it was a failed experiment. It's still testament to Taratino's gift for character and dialogue -- and to Winstead's ability to extract all of these qualities from so little dialogue through her delivery and her body language -- that Lee is distinct and interesting, but you end up feeling bad for her, feeling bad that the script has shortchanged her and robbed her of her potential. When the curiously absent character elicits more empathy than the three who are being chased by a homicidal maniac, there's a problem.