The difference is that Tarantino's previous films showed talent and style (albeit style heavily influenced by others). Kill Bill lifts its style entirely and unapologetically from other sources -- '70s kung fu, blaxploitation, Sergio Leone, even Tarantino's own stuff (the references to his previous movies are so contrived, numerous, and unsubtle that it's off-putting, the type of juvenile smugness I'd expect from Kevin Smith) -- and talent is sort of beside the point in this carnival. Yeah, it's damn entertaining, if you like that kind of thing (which I do) -- the fights are excellent, the pace exciting, the humor off-beat -- but thinking about it afterwards, it seems kind of... pointless.
What you've heard about the extravagant violence is true. Let me put it this way: I kept my eyes open during the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs; I didn't blink (hell, I laughed) when Uma Thurman got stabbed in the chest with a giant needle in Pulp Fiction. But my eyes were squinched shut during parts of this movie. Most of the violence is so cartoonish that it's bearable, if excessive -- there's a lot of what Monty Python would call "flesh wounds," and blood geysers from these flesh wounds so exuberantly that it's silly rather than sickening. But some of it is just repulsive.
Everything is over the top in that way. Most of the time, it's so goofy that it works, but sometimes it's too much (for no reason, Tarantino bleeps out Uma Thurman's character's name -- she's known to us as "The Bride" -- whenever someone says it. Why not either spend a little extra effort to write dialogue that doesn't use her name, or just not be so stupidly coy about it?). Tarantino throws all kinds of crazy shit at us, and it's fun, but I couldn't help thinking that, like Baz Luhrmann with Moulin Rouge, a little restraint and focus could have served him well. For one thing, a judicious editor could easily have made this a single film -- not that I'm not glad it's split in two the way it is now, because three-plus hours of this would be hard to take, but (without having seen Vol. 2, admittedly) I think it could easily have been two hours and change.
All of that said, I enjoyed the hell out of it while I was watching it. Uma Thurman is great as the coldly vengeful Bride, and her opponents are all viciously fun with James Bond, comic-book excess (I can't wait to see more of Michael Madsen in Vol. 2). I don't know anything about the "grind house" films -- extremely violent flicks usually shown in dive theaters -- this movie copies, but I know from reading an Entertainment Weekly article that it's the Marlon Brando of grind house, Sonny Chiba, who plays the enormously entertaining sword maker, Hattori Hanzo.
David Edelstein of Slate has a terrific review of Kill Bill; I agree with almost everything he says.
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