It’s not a good sign that while watching “Robin Hood,” the title song from Mel Brooks’ 1993 “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” was flitting through my head for much of the time.
The earlier movie’s rousing theme song, done as a production number, included the lyrics, “We're men, we're men in tights/ We rob from the rich and give to the poor, that's right!/ We may look like sissies, but watch what you say or else we'll put out your lights!/ We're men, we're men in tights.”
Oh, but that Russell Crowe, the dour Robin Hood of this new Ridley Scott-directed version, would break out into song and dance. It could only enliven, this ponderous, two-hour-and-20-minute "Gladiator in Tights" slog that’s an appetizer before a main course that never arrives.
Literally.
The movie's biggest problem is that it is an origins tale, intent on giving us the back story on how Robbing Hood became Robin Hood.
Indeed, just the fact that this is an origins story remains its biggest problem – well, other than we once again get Ridley Scott casting Crowe as a weary warrior compelled to take up arms so that, geez, all men will be free.
Well, Robin Hood isn’t Superman or Spider-Man; we don’t need to know the origin of his allergy to Kryptonite or how a lab accident enabled him to shoot webs from his wrists.
Robin robs from the rich and gives to the poor. End of story. Isn’t that the story we actually want to see?
Instead, here Robin begins as a journeyman archer who is bone tired after spending a decade off on a Crusade with King Richard the Lionhearted. When Richard dies in battle in France, Robin deserts, eventually assuming the identity of a fallen English knight and heading back to Nottingham to return the dead man’s sword to his father. Once in Nottingham, he falls for Marion (Cate Blanchett), the knight’s widow.That part is easy to follow and the scenes between Crowe and Blanchett are winning. More convoluted and way less intriguing is all the mumbo-jumbo about the French king plotting to conquer England and callous King John, Richard’s successor, plotting to rule England with an iron hand and an engorged purse (thanks to merciless taxing of his subjects).
All of which by the end -- and only after numerous, action-heavy, sword-clanging battle scenes -- results in Robin being denounced by King John and going into hiding in Nottingham’s forests. At which point a title card appears, just before the final credits roll, reading, “The legend begins.”
Well, duh!
Hollywood has been aquiver over Robin Hood nearly since movies began, making dozens of different versions, not to mention several TV series. Douglas Fairbanks, the silver screen’s first great swashbuckler, let his bow do the talking in the 1922 silent, “Robin Hood.”
