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Robin Hood: Prince of ThievesRating:
Release Date: 30 September, 1997 Retail Price: $19.96 OUR Price: $15.97 You SAVE: $3.99! Cast: Complete Cast (10 total) |
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Reviews
So awful you must be warned!
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen. Fans of the great Morgan Freeman or Alan Rickman may be tempted to buy or rent this film, but it is my duty to warn you to resist. Morgan Freeman plays it straight and can't give a poor performance anyway, but we don't really care much about his character. Alan Rickman, though, goes way past camp. He's over the top without being entertaining. But camp was a logical choice, given the unbelievably bad script. Rickman's associate is a witch, Morgana, and that whole storyline is jaw-droppingly bad. It's not even clear if it's supposed to be scary or funny or campy or what. The witch seems to be popping in from some high school production of MacBeth and has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, which wants to be taken seriously. Maybe Rickman's performance would have worked if the direction weren't so bad and the director had cut the film differently. The worst thing about the film is Kevin Costner, who appears to be trying to win the award for worst performance of the 1990s. He's got my vote. I had no idea he was such a terrible actor. I had seen trailers of this movie and avoided it for years, but it's much worse than I even thought possible. Some of the supporting players are appealing--Nick Brimble as Little John is good--but the acting is generally very bad. The script is abyssmal, and, although the director can shoot arrows flying towards the camera, he manages to make it boring. If you enjoy Freeman's or Rickman's acting, try Amistad or The Shawshank Redemption with Freeman and Something the Lord Made or The Barchester Chronicles with Rickman.
Paving the Road to "Kevin's Gate"
Right on the heels of "Dances With Wolves," many thought that Kevin Costner could no wrong, cinematically speaking. Where he did he ever get the idea that he could play Robin Hood? This movie isn't a bad movie per se. It moves along pretty well, the action is good, and it has a nice surprise guest appearance which out of good taste I will not reveal. I think Kevin was aiming for a more historically accurate update of Errol Flynn's 1938 technicolor spectacular, but he didn't quite hit the mark. In that respect I would recommend Richard Lester's 1976 "Robin and Marian," with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. No one comes across as really believeable here: Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Alan Rickman or Mary Louise Mastrantonio. They don't seem entirely comfortable in their roles, a thing you can't say about the other two movies I mentioned. The Bryan Adams song may have been a hit, but this just seemed (and seems) to me like another example of Hollywood's tendency to dumb down great stories for the masses and add an element of political correctness at the expense of the story's integrity and authenticity. After the success of "Dances With Wolves," many people thought Costner had the makings of a latter day John Ford. However, this movie was a big disappointment in the aftermath of hie great Western success. Little did we know that the way was being paved for "Waterworld," "The Postman," and a rapid succession of other disappointments.
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