MTV.com film critic Kurt Loder nails the new Russell Crowe film “Robin Hood” with one arrow from his quiver:
“Robin Hood fans hoping for some of the dash and wit of the classic films that starred Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn should set their expectation meters to Off.”
Update: Big Hollywood’s John Nolte gets his licks in, too. All I can say is … ouch.
“Personally, I’d prefer [Kevin] Costner have another go before Scott and Crowe saddle up again.”
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t think we’ll ever see another “Robin Hood” that doesn’t have everything the crew thinks is wrong with the contemporary world crammed into it. The last RH I saw was “Robin and Marion.” Well directed, beautifully photographed, a cast the likes of which we’ll never see again, but…. man, it was gloomy.
SPOILER ALERT!
***********
Maid Marion kills herself and Robin, the last we see of the Merry Men they’re surrounded by the bad guys and doomed. Glad I saw it, but don’t much want to see it again.
My guess, the doom and gloom is for a reason. You can’t possibly replicate the fun of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland, so why not go the other direction? Unfortunately, before anyone can ask “should we make this” it’s already green-lit based all on its franchise.
Charlos: while I think people tend to go overboard with spoiler warnings these days (‘Spoiler: in this romantic comedy, the couple meet a major obstacle to their relationship half way through’), you really should think twice about just blurting out the fate of major characters in a movie.
The spoiler rule is a bit blurry with much older films … but I’m going to add a “spoiler” warning on this all the same.
Spoiler:
It’s the freakin’ sled!
Am I the only one who thinks that this incarnation’s Robin Hood looks like he spent too much time drinking whiskey until sunrise? I haven’t seen it, and generally like Crowe’s films, but this seems like an awful bit of casting.
Saw Ridley Hood on Friday night with low expectations based on your review and found myself disagreeing with you for the first 2/3 of the movie. The introduction to Robin and the Sommersby plotline were well done and I started to think that your only real objection to the movie was that it was called Robin Hood.
Spoilers <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Then came the French invasion in wooden versions of WW2 landing craft and Marion in custom armor followed by a group of lost boys. Throw in the shaky-cam, excessive close-ups and a complete lack of style (which Ridley Scott used to be known for) and even my wife wished it had been replaced with a blank screen and caption stating "Robin repels the French Invasion."
Mycroft – I’m not a big Robin Hood devotee, but it does strike me as odd to completely revamp the character. That said, had the dark, brooding Robin Hood that emerged captured my imagination I wouldn’t complain too much. (and thanks for the spoiler warning — well done!)
Sorry, jic. Should have added the SPOILER myself. Didn’t occur to me because the film is so old. Then again, I really wish critics hadn’t given away the endings of “Psycho” and “Citizen Kane” before I saw them in theaters.
Also, the ending was just about the first thing critics mentioned at the time, knew it before I could go see the picture the second week it was out. The critics doing spoiler problem is old.
It’s funny that you mentioned that, because I was going to bring it up in relation to an earlier comment here. When we watched Psycho in school and had a discussion beforehand, I got shouted at for revealing several major plot points. The thing is that I had not seen the movie at that point, I had picked everything up from popular culture. Had none of these people ever seen a cartoon, a sitcom, or a talk show? I still don’t actually think I did anything wrong.
I think there’s a difference between movies where the major plot twists have become part of popular culture (e.g. Psycho, Citizen Kane, The Crying Game) and movies that are just old. With the latter, I don’t see why they are any less prone to spoiling than a new release. A while back, somebody on another site gave away the death of a certain character in the movie Very Bad Things, even noting how much of a surprise it was when they saw the movie. I had just bought a copy and not yet watched it at the time. When I pointed out that he had pretty much ruined the movie for me, he wrote something along the lines of ‘Dude, that movie is over 11 years old! In other news, Rosebud is ****** ****’* ****!’ (I wouldn’t normally hide that for the reasons I mentioned above, but it would feel strange stating it openly at this point in the thread, even though you all know exactly what I meant). The guy was lucky that you can’t punch people through the internet.
Rosebud was ruined for me by Charles Schulz. He had Lucy reveal the ending to Charlie Brown as he was sitting down to watch it.
Sometimes, as in Pauline Kael’s review of a movie we’ve been discussing, a spoiler is a warning that the adds for a movie have not been honest and are hiding what many viewers will find an unpleasant surprise.