[Movie Review] Robin Hood.

Every movie nowadays endeavors to be a gritty, realistic film firmly entrenched in angsty drama that tries to force us to relate to it's plethora of emotional skulduggery, like a teenager wearing black lipstick, tight leather and assuming the name "RavenWing" in a desperate cry for attention. It seems that we've reached the point of modern storytelling where older, successful movies are remade simply because people working in the movie industry are too busy snorting buckets of cocaine and having their way with young Filipino sex slaves to actually come up with something new and/or innovative.

The old Robin Hood movies were light-hearted cheery offerings, quick of wit and tongue in cheek, depicting the adventures of that old scalawag Robin of Loxley and his band of Merry Men as they stole from the rich and gave to the poor with many an act of derring-do and other anarchic phrases that I can't possibly be arsed to remember.

I am sad to say that I find none of these things in this newest of remakes.

The movie tries so hard to keep up with this new tradition of being all dark and grungy that it completely abandoned the endearing qualities that made Robin Hood such an enjoyable tale in the first place. There are no acts of thievery committed in the name of the people, well except for that one part that I wasn't too awake for, the humour is forced at best, and Robin Longstride (Russel Crowe) is stoic, iron faced, granite ballsed, and marble titted at the best of times.

I'm somewhat of the mind that Crowe thought this was Gladiator II and decided to reprise the emotional capacity of an orphaned brick.

Speaking of bricks, who the hell decided to cast Cate Blanchett as Maid Marion? She's about as attractive as a cracked toenail, with all the sharp angular edges to boot. I will admit that her performance was pretty decent, but I kept waiting for her to drop her sword and stab someone with those razor edged cheekbones.

The rest of the cast gave credible performances, with the band of Moderately-Amused Fellows(too many of the buggers to list), and Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong from Kickass! :O!) filling out the roles necessary to keep this 2.5 hour titan plodding onwards.

Now I might seem to be judging harshly, but f*** you, that's what I do, and that's exactly what the movie feels like to me: A badly paced, blundering leviathan straining to be something more. Something it could have been if only Director Ridley Scott hadn't tried to make an all the rage origin story and maybe actually, possibly, deigned to make a film about Robin f****** Hood.

In fact, this movie has so little to do with the legend that the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Somethingortheother) isn't even the villian, which leads me to believe that they could have changed the names of the characters, titled it "Kingdom of Heaven: The part that happened in the woods" and nobody would have ever noticed.

The movie itself taunts you further by proclaiming at the end that "The legend begins", and this actually made me angry, very angry indeed. Why did the legend begin in the last 10 seconds of the movie? It's obvious they're setting up for a sequel, like every other f****** movie that comes out, and frankly I would prefer to see that movie than this crud that just seems to be filling in the timeslot before the real story begins. I'm pretty sure they could have cut down this entire movie into 20 minutes then continued with the tale of Robin Hood and come out much better for it.

Pros: Moments of Good Movie occasionally shine through; Decent action scenes; Some good plot elements; Possibility of sequel that may actually be relevant.

Cons: Has about as much to do with R.Hood as a potted plant has to do with telemarketing; Russel Crowe isn't cut out to be "Merry" and his ever changing accent is laughable; The good parts were held hostage by a series of extremely boring negotiations and tomfoolery; Special effects didn't look like they were good enough for a film with a budget just shy of Avatar's; Possibility of a sequel that may be just as irrelevant.

Consensus: 5/10 Guffawing Chaps. This may come as a surprise since I ripped on the movie so much, but don't get me wrong, it's by no means "terrible", it's just not "great" either. You can watch it, I guess, but I won't force you, nor will I berate you if you actually choose to watch it.

In retrospect I'm probably being overly harsh because I genuinely love Gladiator and to see Ridley and Russel betray me makes me a very sad panda indeed. I had felt that with them making another movie I would presented with a chocolatey egg of legendary wondrousness filled with the creamy goodness of prime storytelling. Instead I cracked open the chocolatey egg and found the man eating snails of mediocrity gnawing at my face.