Watch My Best Friend's Birthday For Free

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Today, Quentin Tarantino's first film "My Best Friend's Birthday" might be silly or very poor in quality to some, but to others it is a perfect example of seeing how a great director was born, with a limited budget trying to make a small film without taking film lessons in film schools elsewhere. For the fans, this is a great chance to see a few things that makes us love Quentin and his films and that is his early uses of film references; pop culture references; those long and interesting, clever and funny dialogs.In its half hour more or less, unfinished or with the ending lost somewhere, "My Best Friend's Birthday" delivers short situations with a bunch of characters talking randomly but very funny stuff or getting themselves involved in some hilarious situation. But all of these small sketches takes them to Mickey's birthday (played by Craig Hamann, one of the writers of the film), friend of Clarence (Tarantino, playing the role later given to Christian Slater in "True Romance"), a friendlier and funny DJ of a local station, who holds our attention with his movie references like "Jailhouse Rock", "The Countess of Hong Kong" and "Dressed to Kill", and his ideas on Elvis, music and other things. Right there, in 1987, and you already have the Tarantino as his usual routine as we all know: fast talker, the way he uses the references and the music in the background (classic rock), and all. It's more like a comedy and the only instance of violence comes with a hilarious moment of Mickey fighting kung fu with a pimp and that's it. The rest of it is dialog after dialog and brilliant ones (my favorite parts are the "garlick gum" that made a guy cursing all the time and Quentin having a cocaine bad trip).Even without the ending and with a terrible amateurish cinematography, this is a good example of how someone can start in the film business but with very few at hand. During interviews about the amazing "Inglorious Basterds" Quentin said this: "Some people will like "Inglorious Basterds". Some people won't. But it was made with all the passion I've made everything with - except maybe my first film, which was probably made with more passion than I'll ever have again." Even if now, he disowns this little gem, barely talks about it, this statement, made when he already had given us classics like "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction", is a proof that even this almost unseen short film has a special place in Quentin's heart, something he'll never forget. And it was his first real experience behind a camera dealing and learning with all the pros and cons about what making a film really is.I enjoyed it and recommend. It's hilarious, funny, entertaining, very simple and with incredible moments. We can only look back and see how Tarantino got better and better with the time. 10/10

Well I finally saw Quentin Tarantino's "film school", which is what's left of his 70 minutes long debut, never officially released (saw it on a bootleg DVD), film My Best Friend's Birthday (35 minutes). This worth watching stuff that is just for fans of Tarantino; for me QT delivers here, not quite because of his direction, not quite because of his cast but just because of his dialog and his participation as the main character, radio disc jokey rockabilly Clarence Pool (the birthday of the title is the one of Clarence's best friend). Basically Clarence Pool is the best thing of the 35 minutes, and Tarantino doesn't deliver a truly fantastic performance but his character has pretty much the best dialog, he is fun. The 35 minutes are very fragmented: we have first Clarence at work, we have stuff at the K-BILLY radio station and we have three other characters (two K-BILLY workers and the guest of Clarence's show). It's both very funny and not quite funny, for instance is hilarious when Clarence recalls certain reaction that he had when he was a 3 year old kid but is not quite all the stuff with the other two dudes, except when one gives cocaine to Clarence (and Clarence sniffs, not hesitating because of his guest)…it's poorly made but nevertheless fun! The other fragments mainly involves Clarence's best friend Mickey (played by Craig Hamann, who also wrote the film together with QT), the girl that supposedly will give Mickey a truly great birthday and that began doing her current job thanks to Nancy Allen in Brian De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill (Misty is her name, played by Crystal Shaw) and Clarence's girl. Aside of a sort of funny fight with Misty's black pimp the scenes with Mickey are uninteresting just as the scenes involving Clarence's girl, even the very last fragment with Clarence and Misty is mostly not good (yet there are some cool lines and for QT fans may be interesting hearing from Clarence that he "has a food fetish"), well basically after the first fragment at the radio station the stuff I really liked comes from Tarantino's character: a really nice talk with a clerk about Elvis, Marlon Brando, Chaplin's swan song, The Beatles, Colonel Parker and stuff ("you see the same cake?", that was hilarious!). My Best Friend's Birthday is not a Tarantino thing that I would like to see a lot, basically once is good enough, funny bits, some memorable lines, let's re-watch True Romance

I mean no disrespect to any of the other commentators of this movie, but I never would have expected to hear someone say this is, would have, or could have been QT's best. In fact, I think Tarantino himself would have a good laugh at that notion. He might even take offense to it.If you've ever seen the time Tarantino was on Charlie Rose, he talks a bit about this movie (without ever mentioning the title) and I can see and completely agree with everything he said about it. It's really an awful movie - largely due to the horrendous acting... but what are you gonna do; it's essentially a student film for a man who was never a film student.In case you haven't seen the interview I mentioned, here's basically what he said: He admitted that the movie was really bad, but if you watched it, you could tell that he did it (very true). He also said this movie, while a complete failure, was his film school. He learned about film-making during the process of making this film; it really amounted to an experiment. In another interview he mentioned that, when he was in negotiations for Reservoir Dogs, when asked by a studio exec if they could see his previous work, he said no.There are a few moments that are very much Tarantino, and a couple of them show up in evolved forms in his later movies. This is the reason referred to in the summary line of this review. QT is, without a shadow of a doubt, my all-time favorite filmmaker, so it's an interesting look back in time to see what a completely inexperienced, unprepared Tarantino with no budget whatsoever could do.I realize I haven't quite specified what was so bad about this movie, but it's pretty much everything. It's not well thought out, it's disjointed, the sound and picture are horrible (don't worry, I'm not really counting against it for that - it's to be expected for such a low budget film), the dialogue is not up to par, and I reiterate that the acting is truly awful (with the exception of QT himself).However, it is undeniably a Tarantino movie, and for that reason and that reason alone I can see fit to give it 5/10 stars. I can guarantee, though, that most of these people rating it at 10 stars would not give this movie the time of day if it were from a no-name director. I'm no different, but I admit it openly, and I'm not afraid to critique the man despite my near-idolization of him. I think it was actually a nice twist of fate that this movie was destroyed, making Reservoir dogs his first official film credit instead.

Based upon seeing what little footage remains of this movie, I don't think that the full-length version would have been a great movie. What's seen here is a jumble of different scenes that each advance the story very little. Tarantino clearly didn't yet have a full grasp of more proper ways to plot and execute a story. Still, despite this (and the very primative production values and acting), the footage is a fascinating cinematic document of sorts. The movie is full of ideas (and dialogue) that Tarantino later polished up and reused in other movies (primarily TRUE ROMANCE.) So while this is mostly amateur hour as a *movie*, it is very entertaining as a cinematic notebook.