Back to the Grindhouse

I have a reputation for not liking "dumb movies," but I maintain that there are smart dumb movies, and I like those just fine. In my opinion, Grindhouse was a perfect example of the difference between the two; Planet Terror was a smart, well-made movie to watch with your brain switched off, while Death Proof was a plodding and monotonous dumb dumb movie.

Because Robert Rodriguez, the director behind Planet Terror, was also the force behind last year's Machete, I was willing to give it a shot. And it was fun, though not as strong as the earlier B-movie effort.

One weakness is that the "vintage violent film" conceit doesn't work as successfully here as it did for Planet Terror. Machete is doctored with fake film degradation -- scratches, washed out colors, and so forth. But the movie itself has people driving recently manufactured automobiles, referencing fairly current events, and using cell phones and texting (well, except for Machete himself, who "don't text"). Making the film look like trash to sell an impossible conceit -- that the film is decades old and has been played countless times in some crappy multiplex -- feels like it's just compromising the visuals for no good reason.

The script is a mixed bag, but with more good than bad. It's a paper thin premise that serves only to hold different set pieces -- action sequences, sex scenes, gratuitous violence and nudity. Most of the time, the movie and the audience are in on "the joke" together, and so things are entertaining. A few times, things start dragging a bit from repetition, and from awkward stretches in the plot made just so that some of the original footage from Grindhouse's fake trailer for Machete could be incorporated.

But what ultimately kicks the movie into "alright, I guess this is fun after all" territory is that the actors themselves seem to be having fun too. Danny Trejo is a great anchor for a cast that includes Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, and Cheech Marin. And having still more fun than any of them is Robert DeNiro in an unabashedly one-note heel of a villain.

Assuming you know what you're going to get before you start watching Machete (and I assume you would), then it's not too bad. It's just not quite as much fun as Planet Terror, either. I rate it a B-.