edwinharbor QT's "first" film is a glimpse of what was to come from a very talented writer/director; rich banter with an entertaining and skewed look at life. Shot in black and white, on a very small budget, the film has many shortcomings compared to the director's other films. However, it is still part of Tarantino's body of work. In the mid 80's there were not many ways a filmmaker could get a film made - short of getting a film camera and making one with their buddies - and a quick look at the production credits for "My Best Friend's Birthday" suggest this to be the case.I heard this film was unwatchable, but it is actually quite instructional for all hard-core Tarantino fans. Many have stated that this film was QT's film school; so be it. Cream rises because it is less dense than the milk it is found within and eventually makes its way to the top.However, until someone takes a spoon and scoops the cream off the milk, it's stuck there. The Reservoir Dogs producer (Lawrence Bender) skimmed QT from the vat and we are the happy recipients of some rich delicious ice cream due to such.

adrianmonk-russell The opening scene is in my opinion one of QT's most (if not his and only matchless immortal most) iconic genius works of dialog. With a hypersensitive observer of pop ism like QT their works can grossly radically rewire the worldly adult computer mind. It can quite literally turn us into adult children. Either my mind is playing tricks on me from my godlike manic state from QT's genius or QT's writing can be comparable with JD Salinger or even Shakespeare.The opening scene is in my opinion one of QT's most (if not his and only matchless immortal most) iconic genius works of dialog. With a hypersensitive observer of pop ism like QT their works can grossly radically rewire the worldly adult computer mind. It can quite literally turn us into adult children. Either my mind is playing tricks on me from my godlike manic state from QT's genius or QT's writing can be comparable with JD Salinger or even Shakespeare.

Callie Ellis (juicytangerine91) Okay, so its Friday morning, in the wee hours of the day. About 1:00 AM I'd say, when my awesome friend Kylee and I are cruising about YouTube in hope of finding rare gems of times long past. So we search for "Quentin Tarantino" and what do we find??? Why, Its "My Best Friend's Birthday". At first we were like "no way Jose, this has to be a joke, that can't be him....and then we were all...Holy Shizzy! Its him!" So we watched it and just totally ate it up. Its so cult classic awesome! We watched it and were like "For a piece of crap, this is pretty great!" It was really a good film, in my opinion. Well sure I mean so the sound wasn't up to snuff and the acting could be a little bit on the cheesalicious side at time, but it was still entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable! if you are a true QT fan, you gotta see this. I wish it wouldn't have burned. Well, almost.

Ryan Babbitt 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.