the reviewer and most of these commenters are missing layers and layers of text in this movie, which is a meditation on mediating heavily symbolized imagery, and is about, among many other things, the necessity (or lack thereof) for fealty to historical fact, the power of the nazi as a symbol, the particular power of cinema, our complicity in what we see onscreen and how we respond to it, and the morally shaky glee we take in seeing the brutal punishment of a type (in this case, the nazi) in whose graphic and bloody demise we have been given permission to revel (in this case, not just by the filmmaker, but by society at large). we see the basterds, after all, inflict far more grave and sickening violence in the film than any single nazi (despite plenty of gruesome behavior on both sides).
to reduce this to a shallow fantasy of revenge is to severely underestimate tarantino, not to mention to understate the seriously groundbreaking aspects of what people generally and lazily refer to as his "irreverence."
no shallow dealer in cheap thrills has ever even come within miles of staging the scenes of genuine, beautifully observed human emotion that litter tarantino's filmography; in this particular case, if one remains unmoved by the opening chapter of this movie or by the performance of melanie laurent, (or the countless other moments of truth and humanity that litter this movie and mingle alongside broad humor and gruesome violence in a way that tarantino practically invented and certainly owns) then to my mind he or she is incapable of being moved by a film.
tarantino knows very much what he is doing when he draws the audience into morally reprehensible or questionable territory. he is forcing us to confront our responses, examine them, along with our prejudices, and all the while he is reminding us that we are watching a movie, and that whatever power the images have, it is movie power; what we see onscreen is representative, because it cannot help being so, but tarantino exposes his images as such and thus draws double the power from them by forcing our awareness of the symbolic, signified nature of his set-pieces and characters.
Thus, the movie becomes about the idea of a revenge fantasy, and a perverse exaggeration of a revenge fantasy, and tarantino masterfully mediates our responses, our horror, guilt, revulsion, glee, and so on, and in so doing makes us have to take responsibility for our responses to his images by active examination OF our responses.
there's a reason for the last line of the film.. "i think this might just be my masterpiece"

p.s. there's more to reflect upon about "types", about his use of character types, types of set-pieces, the relation of these types to their movie simulacra and their real life simulacra (which are far more salient in the viewers mind here than any previous tarantino movie due to the use of history and some real-life historical figures).... but but it's all in there.

Well, hey, look, the Nazis had really given the Jews a lot to get revenge FOR.

tarantino knows very much what he is doing when he draws the audience into morally reprehensible or questionable territory. he is forcing us to confront our responses, examine them, along with our prejudices, and all the while he is reminding us that we are watching a movie, and that whatever power the images have

nice post. I've seen the movie twice now, and the Friday night audience was shocked in the appropriate places. There was a fellow with his wife. he was the exception. He went nuts cheering and laughing when the Nazi got his head bashed.

then later in the film he even cheered louder when the women were murdered. The movie ended, the credits started to roll and he and his wife bolted. It was a almost full theater, and it must have been obvious to him he stood out as one sadistic, violence cheering creep, because only way they would have been gone quicker is if our theater had been on fire.

jickbones:

... tarantino knows very much what he is doing when he draws the audience into morally reprehensible or questionable territory. he is forcing us to confront our responses, examine them, along with our prejudices, and all the while he is reminding us that we are watching a movie, and that whatever power the images have, it is movie power; what we see onscreen is representative, because it cannot help being so, but tarantino exposes his images as such and thus draws double the power from them by forcing our awareness of the symbolic, signified nature of his set-pieces and characters. Thus, the movie becomes about the idea of a revenge fantasy, and a perverse exaggeration of a revenge fantasy, and tarantino masterfully mediates our responses, our horror, guilt, revulsion, glee, and so on, and in so doing makes us have to take responsibility for our responses to his images by active examination OF our responses. there's a reason for the last line of the film.. "i think this might just be my masterpiece" ...

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!!! Well stated. When the theater screen is fully filled with the flaming screen of the theater in the film it is like a Magritte painting with a title such as, "This is not a screen". We are forced to ponder what we would do if our own theater were to erupt into flames as well. Now that's good stuff.