It was with some excitement that I sat down last night and opened a Christmas present and slotted it into the DVD player. I'm a great fan of Tarantino, and having missed his latest at the Odeon, I was really looking forward to seeing Inglorious Basterds. And indeed, it pretty much started as I expected - a pastiche of everything that's bad about American War movies - poor title graphics, mono soundtrack...and I really liked the touch of having all the production team given Italian names...very good. It carried on, and the voices were nearly synced, the acting was the prefect take on B movie woodenness. The characters were caricatures - and the acting suitably wooden. I loved some of the explosions with bodies flying up into the sky obviously attached to wires - and the bit which made me laugh out loud was when the renegades came across a group of naked women, who turned on them with machine guns. Gratuitous it was and well done - although a bit like Deathproof, it was a joke difficult to sustain over the course of the whole film.
After an hour I was puzzling about the absence of Brad Pitt, and couldn't quite figure out who had won an Oscar for best supporting actor...I called to the boy and asked if he could Google it. He picked up the packaging and asked what I was watching. "Inglorious Basterds" I said. "Oh the one with Brad Pitt?" he replied. "Uh huh" I said. He looked at the packaging to reveal the terrible, terrible truth. "This isn't the one with Brad Pitt in. That's Inglorious Basterds. This is the original Inglorious Bastards. You're watching the wrong film."
Indeed I had been. For a whole hour. A whole hour of my life in a state of confusion and mis-understanding.
He was quite matter of fact about it. Obviously parents are stupid, so mistakes like that are inevitable.
I blame Santa. He has a lot to answer for.
