STEALING PULP FICTION - Mark Reviews Movies

Stealing Pulp Fiction, Tribeca Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 26, 2025

Everyone knows a good sign of a bad joke is when the teller has to explain it. Stealing Pulp Fiction does that often, but writer/director Danny Turkiewicz's debut feature also has to regularly point out that its jokes are actually jokes in the first place. The filmmaker is at least aware that this movie is probably funny to only a select group of people—most of whom are likely involved in making it.

It's easy to point out how this comedy goes wrong, because it does from the start and so frequently after, but the real question, perhaps, is what made Turkiewicz believe it could go right. The feature is based on a short he made several years back, in which the filmmaker himself played a man obsessed with Quentin Tarantino, who decided to steal the director's private print of, naturally, Pulp Fiction at a repertory screening.

The short, as turns out from a quick and curious viewing, was pretty pointless, existing mainly to name-check Tarantino, to fill the frame with the occasional easter egg, and to give us some admittedly lovely black-and-white shots of the exterior of the New Beverly Cinema—the Los Angeles revival house that Tarantino owns. If one watched the short before the feature-length adaptation, the first question would be to wonder how it possibly could be expanded. If one watches the short after the longer version, the only thought is that the source material explains why there's so little going on in the feature.

The plot, of course, is the same as the original version, although Jon Rudnitsky plays Jonathan, the Tarantino fan, and Karan Soni plays Steve, a loyal partner in crime for the protagonist. Their relationship is the first dead-end of the comedy, because it's just so strange. They're meant to be best friends, but Jonathan talks to and treats Steve like a child, because Steve speaks and behaves very much like one. The dynamic ends up becoming the most obvious excuse for Jonthan to constantly explain his jokes to Steve, because he doesn't understand them, and for Steve to repeatedly point out he's making a joke, because they're not funny.

If that were the end of such moments, it might be fine, if irritatingly repetitive, because it's at least defined by these characters and gives us a sense of their relationship. No, the rest of the movie does this, as well, with other characters being added into the mix of explaining their own jokes or making sure everyone knows they're telling a joke.

The two main inclusions are Elizabeth (Cazzie David, reprising her role from the short), a mutual friend of the pair who hates Tarantino's movies, and the friends' odd therapist Dr. Mendelbaum (Jason Alexander), who now runs his practice in the backroom of a karate studio and has both pals give him a therapy session because his marriage is failing. There's a confoundingly written scene in which Jonathan and Steve have a trial run of burglary by breaking into Mendelbaum's office, where the bad doctor both speaks as if his patients didn't know his office was in a karate studio and references the sessions he had with each of them in this place earlier.

Anyway, the four end up scheming to steal the print from Tarantino's now-unspecified movie theater and divide the reels amongst each other. Jonathan wants it, simply to have it. Steve wants to do whatever his friend wants, and Mendelbaum wants to sell it for much-needed cash.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth wants to burn it. One would imagine her plan would be a deal-breaker for at least Jonathan, who is supposedly a Tarantino fanatic and generally a fan of film, but one supposes he agrees to let her participate in the heist because she has a car and surely must be joking. Given the pattern here, Jonathan should know better, because Elizabeth doesn't outright say her plan is a joke and go on to explain why it's supposed to be funny.

There's a lot of aimless chatter in Stealing Pulp Fiction, which is probably intended to replicate the method and tenor of Tarantino's dialogue, just as the music selection, use of chapter breaks, and editing is meant to be an homage to his filmmaking. It's cheap and unconvincing, to say the least. The movie's own version of "Quentin F---ing Tarantino," as actor Seager Tennis is credited, looks like the embodiment of that kind of shoddy impersonation.

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