Django Unchained: What Did I Think?

SPOILER WARNING

That title is not a cheesy way to declare this my opinion on the movie. It is actually the question I will be pondering in this post. After watching it, I feel incredibly conflicted over how I feel about it. There were many parts that I really enjoyed, but there were also many parts that I did not like or found to be incredibly distasteful.
For full disclosure, this is my first Tarantino film. So if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to him, it's because I don't. My biggest question for someone who perhaps knows him a bit better would be this: should I be taking this movie seriously? Or is the whole thing supposed to be a joke? Either way, I had issues with it, but it would help me figure out my final thoughts on it if I knew which one it was.

If it is all a joke (which I'm leaning towards), then my biggest issue was that some of the comedy was simply not funny. There was more than one time when I felt like the writers were trying to make the N-word funny (combining it with Hercules? Really?) and in general I found their use of the word to be generally distasteful. Now, I understand that people used to word back then so it's "historically accurate", but that doesn't cut it for me. If you're going to be gritty and realistic with a word as virulent as that, then you have to take what you're saying seriously. And this movie did not take that word seriously at all. Another issue I had with the film as a comedy was that it seemed to have this undertone, this hinting that this story would in some way become grand and epic, with deep meaning and an ending that had deep symbolizing, or at least deep SOMETHING. But it never did. It just kind of meandered around, with an extremely unnecessarily violent and bloody shootout, some gullible Australians and a very unsatisfying ending.
Now before it sounds like I'm hating too hard on it, there were many parts that I found extremely entertaining, and even some character arcs that I enjoyed, whether they were accidental or not. The bag scene perfectly toed the line between hysterical and offensive, and was probably one of the funniest scenes I had seen in a while. Also, the opposing character arcs of Dr. Schultz and Django was pretty interesting. Without spoiling too much, it was interesting to watch Dr. Schultz drop his facade and gain some humanity, while seeing Django put up a facade and lose his. Personally, I felt that this theme could have been explored much more, but I liked it nonetheless.

Ultimately, what I can say is that this movie has made me stop and think more than any movie I've seen since Fight Club, so in that sense I guess it's good, although I'm unwilling to admit that Tarantino meant for that to happen. Which I think sums up my feelings about the movie: any sort of depth or interesting symbols or themes seemed accidental and so I feel like I can't really praise it for accidentally being kind of good at parts.