Robin Hood
Hoyts, Norflanz 16/05/10
Status: Behind by 8.8 films.
This is a strange day. A very strange day indeed. For the first time ever I agree with The Age’s principal film reviewer Jim Schembri. Normally, my taste is diametrically opposite to his - he hates it, I like it; he likes it, I hate it. And I don’t just mean Titanic (which is his favorite film), I mean every single time. Until now, that is. Until Robin Hood. Schembri hated it. And I, to my surprise, hated it too.
RIDLEY SCOTT’s Robin Hood is a stupid, stupid film. Each of the writing, direction, performances and accents are completely nonsensical. The one good thing might be the production design and the fact that (thanks to their stupendously engorged budget) they had actual people running around pretending to be armies and at least some of the boats of the invading Spanish fleet were not computer generated.
I reckon that out of the several adaptations of this story - from Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner via cartoon foxes and Cary Elwes - RUSSELL CROWE’s Robin will be the one most quickly tossed aside. Mostly because of how bad it is, but also because in tone it’s not really a Robin Hood story at all. It fits better alongside Braveheart and Gladiator (and the comparison is not at all favourable).
But really, Mr Schembri, can we go back to disagreeing now? Otherwise I’m likely to get very confused and think that maybe Titanic wasn’t half as bad as I remembered it.
