STEALING PULP FICTION is a small comedy that is never more than it needs to be: breezy, funny, and small-scale. Danny Turkiewicz’s comedy feature debut centres around a postmodern reverence for Quentin Tarantino and the cinema-going experience.
Jonathan (Jon Rudnitsky) and Steve (Karan Soni) are two friends with bad ideas: speakeasy movie theatres that show blockbusters in the front and arthouse films in the back; no-carb diets that don’t include popcorn. But at a midnight screening, the pair come up with the perfect heist idea: steal Quentin Tarantino’s personal 35mm print of PULP FICTION from one of the regular screenings at his cinema. “Nobody would ever think to steal a film print.”
Rudnitsky and Soni immediately establish a fun dynamic in their pairing, with most scenes consisting of snappy back-and-forth dialogue between the two. There’s a charming casualness to their relationship that forms a solid foundation for the more absurdist elements and more colourful characters that emerge throughout the film. The cynical and acerbic Elizabeth (Cazzie David) and their hapless therapist, Dr. Mendelbaum (Jason Alexander), join the two.
“STEALING PULP FICTION has an ironic postmodern sensibility combining a reverence for cinema and the cinema-going experience – midnight screenings, overflowing tubs of popcorn, the smell of 35mm prints – with an ironic appreciation of Quentin Tarantino’s own postmodern work.”
The addition of the pair’s therapist threatens to tip the film into maudlin emotional arcs, but Turkiewicz resists this impulse. This feature film is an expansion of his 2020 short film of the same name and Turkiewicz wisely recognises the appropriate scale for this story. It doesn’t need the addition of significant emotional character beats; it just needs to be more of the same and to be fun. Turkiewicz finds the right balance of snappy dialogue, laugh-out-loud moments, and absurdism to make a comedy film that remains funny right to the end.
As the title suggests, STEALING PULP FICTION has an ironic postmodern sensibility combining a reverence for cinema and the cinema-going experience – midnight screenings, overflowing tubs of popcorn, the smell of 35mm prints – with an ironic appreciation of Quentin Tarantino’s own postmodern work. The film becomes a mix of PULP FICTION, RESERVOIR DOGS, and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS with just a dash of Wes Anderson. There are lovingly deployed Tarantino-esque tropes – cutaways, freeze-frames, slow-motion shots of the heist cue, and the occasional Western-inspired music cue. Still, the film is ready to acknowledge the flaws of Tarantino’s work, especially with regard to women and their appendages.
STEALING PULP FICTION is a deliberately small film that wisely recognises its appropriate scale and doesn’t attempt to be any bigger than it needs to be. It has enough charm and energy packed into it to outpace other films that try to expand themselves beyond their natural size.