05-20-10 Move Review: Robin Hood

At this dismal time for moviegoers, it is unhappy news that all three of our noncommercial movies over the next seven days are tonight, Thursday. The biggest news is a special showing of a new documentary about people who are offering us an alternative to the controversial mainstream food industry that is accused of promoting, quote, “food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity,” unquote. There’s a reception preceding in the Farmers Market at 6:30, and the movie, called Fresh, shows at 7:30 tonight in Newman University’s Dugan Library and Student Center at 3100 McCormick Avenue. I’m told Fresh is much more cheerful and optimistic than some of the other movies about food problems. That’s 7:30 tonight at Newman , 3100 McCormick Avenue. That’s Tallgrass usual Third Thursday movie. Elsewhere at 7, the Orpheum is showing the original Karate Kid, with Ralph Macchio studying martial arts under Pat Morita, defeating the villain, and winning Elizabeth Shue; 7 tonight in the Orpheum. And half an hour later, at 7:30, the Murdock Theatre at 536 North Broadway will show An Affair to Remember, with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in a love story that changes in midstream from comedy to drama, something much more in fashion now than it was in 1957. 7:30 tonight in the Murdock.

And elsewhere, there is Robin Hood, which you may not want to hear about because I can’t review it without telling about the plot.

Because the big thing about Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood is that it is so different from former Robin Hoods and thus may disappoint fans of the original legend.

In the first place, this Robin Hood is not an outlaw until the very end of the movie; he’s a loyal soldier of the king, fighting in a crusade and returning to defend the king against a usurper; he’s an establishment man, battling corruption and eventually deciding that the whole system has to be changed in the direction of the Magna Carta, which defended the upper classes against the king, not the lower classes against anything at all. This leaves us with a lot of action and a sympathetic cause, but deprives us of the jolly-looking life in the woods, like a good camping trip.

And neither Robin nor his men are particularly merry, in the sense we might expect. Merriment is apparently not Russell Crowe’s strong point, and his is dour and almost without personality, surprisingly with an actor of such skill. We see almost nothing of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet and the rest of the happy campers, though there are a number of village parties with a lot of music and dancing. Maid Marian is a farm wife who milks cows and helps plow fields as well as dons armor and attacks the villain in single combat; audience women may appreciate that.

But landing ships and in fact a whole amphibious landing that too closely resembles Saving Private Ryan, while they may be authentic, hardly seem so, and too many shots suggesting the Olivier and Branagh versions of Henry V are distracting, and make me believe there are a lot more homages that I am missing because I avoid action movies.

As a Robin Hood purist, I was not happy with Robin Hood. You may be freer to like it better.