The answer to the first question is yes it deserves your money 100%. Will you enjoy Robin Hood enough for it to merit 140 minutes of your incredibly precious free time? That can be answered by you answering this question: Do you really like castles? If the answer is yes, than you are not a hollow soulless cretin who had any and all imagination ground out of your heart by too much “Hey Dude”, and Nickelodeon in general. If you really like, not even love, a little medievalness than Russell Crow and Ridley Scott, who I don’t even like, will take care of the rest.
Yes, like me, the super critical will find some groaners, and to help you preemptively gird your loins so that their blows may be better absorbed, not spoiling but hopefully improving the experience, here they are: some “Lord of the Flies” orphans are out in Sherwood Forest, the plot gets into Robin's dad basically writing Magna Carta, Lady/Maid Marion shows up in armor on the battlefield, and lastly "The Legend Continues" is thrown up on the screen before the credits roll. The first of those is only a very minor part, however annoying, the next two I was able to rationalize and convince myself that they acceptably raise the stakes of the following scenes thereby making the whole more enjoyable. The fact that the studio doesn't trust us to know an origin story when we see, but instead pummels us with "to be continued" which should be quarantined to Back to the Futures and book series franchises is, I guess to be expected. So now that the grit is out of the way, what is there to like/love about this most recent and possibly best cinematic incarnation of the legend. There's a lot, it has the best castle sieges in recent memory even if the castle isn't the most massive, an epic theme, top of the line actors that you want to spend time with: Crow, Blanchete, Van Sydow, Hurt, shots of English countryside that will all but send you to priceline.com, and jokes. I thought the jokes were great, some were on the nose, some slid in nicely, and others were confidently placed with throw away subtlety; e.g. where a song stops or Prince John's in bed hand to mouth action.
Almost all the reviews I've read justly lampoon the dung heap that was the moronically Saracen including Prince of Thieves, yeah yeah he was brought back from Holy Land, stick to baseball movies bro, and lament that Scott's outlaw flick isn't as merry as the 1938 Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone version that shared it's director with mine and many’s favorite film ever, Casablanca. I love the 1938 film, have been know to quote it; "give me back my mutton chop", "come to the feast and stuff yourselves", and guarantee that I've viewed it at least four more times than any of the critics than pine over Crow not having Flynn's merry joie de vivre. I fully enjoy Errol's other films, not least of which Captain Blood, but his always non-serious demeanor as Robin Hood left me uneasy, these are dark days for England, peasant children are starving, must you perpetually grin?
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So you may have already guess that I never flirted with sacrilege and saw the “Men in Tights” parody, however the VHS of Disney's animal version did get worn out and I look forward to foisting it on my children. While his Robin Hood lacks the aura of Gladiator it is still far better than the cumbersome Kingdom of Heaven, shares the stellar production value of both, and it will be the closest I'll ever get to the Robert Taylor gravitas packed version I wish existed. I long for serious Medieval, Ninja/Samurai, Pirate genre film epics to be made in the mold of “Braveheart”, “Gladiator”, “Lawrence of Arabia, and “The Godfather”, and while it's imperfect I’ll cash out my chips with this romp which will be completely satisfying for anybody who can a appreciate a blockbuster or period piece.
With regards to the second question the answer is unfortunately no with the caveat that it is a film critic’s job to see far too many movies. Most become numb to anything Joe public might like, and overly prefer films that press and weird hard to find buttons because those are the only ones the aren't worn out or broken on them. Roger Ebert would be the exception, he loves film, and errs in the other direction. It is this separation from the one movie a week viewer that places the established critic in a tight spot. They can't all be a heady Pauline Kael, and they'll never be embraced as the first people's critic like Ebert. When it comes to weighing in on the blockbusters they are in trouble, the smaller less widely seen films they can parse, snipe at, and laud while driving few readers to pass final judgement on them one way or another. However, the Spider-mans of the world give them them pause, and find many making calculations not found outside a debate team that hasn't been told which side of the motion they have been given to argue.
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I posit that the A.O. Scotts and Joe Morgensterns purposely try to cover their past misreadings of what the public wants by trying to anticipate how popular opinion will come down on the newest release, if they missed the populous boat on Titanic like David Edelinstien of New York Magazine and Richard Colriss of Time, who both awarded it a 50 point Metacritic score, they will try to correct course and save themselves from becoming completely irrelevant to 98% of the population by flopping over and giving Avatar 100 and 90 point reviews respectively. Todd Mcarthy, the recently fired and much, and maybe sincerely, eulogized former Variety critic and my personally detested David Edelinstien hit the first Spider-man with 70s, and the inexplicably always up front Rotten Tomatoes Mick LaSalle from the SF Chronicle gave it a 50, but on the sequel 100, 90, and 100 point reviews were all of a sudden leveled by the same. The recent Batman flicks only offered one 50 to 100 point swing from a single TV Guide critic and with The Lord of Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises where critics were nearly unanimous albeit in opposite, but in both instances correct directions.
The upshot of my blatant data mining is that regardless of where you split on these movies, they are essentially as similar as they could be, but elicited vastly different opinions from the same people, which makes wonder if the reviewer was genuine in their critique. This wouldn't be a problem except that I think their duplicitousness is prevasive, and when Rotten Tomatoes combines their judgments the public may get a rating that's only as sound as most CDOs originated in 2007.
So are the fanboys right, are movie critics sour and pompous crustys that should be ignored? No, we need people heightening the discussion beyond "cool" or "sucked" and pushing independent film to push Hollywood to give us the thought provoking and or heart palpating future of entertainment that we aren't even aware could exist much less knew we wanted. Is only checking Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic going to kill good film, thereby stupefying us all into electing disingenuous and nakedly opportunistic Romneys and Kerrys that magnify the qualities I loathe in the above critics and their editors on the days they published those reviews? No, those sites are an awesome starting point, plus the general population is already compromised by either mitigated intelligence or opportunity costs so high there's barely enough time in the week to catch some much needed titillation from a CSI or Iron Man 2, so forget about them reading up on both sides of a proposed bill before parlour politicking, or doing the misspent time movie equivalent of finding out if Robin Hood is really a flim worth giving the greenback vote, and thus either propagating or negating tens more of it's quality for good or ill.
My point is only to reiterate what you already know about weekend movie picking, try to hedge your bets as best you can by checking in with Roger Ebert, casually but consciously rotate the critics you skim over your Friday lunch break until you find one that you may not agree with, but that more importantly honestly distills the aspects of a film thereby clarifying your decision process (Michael Phillips at The Chicago Tribune), rate movies on your Netflix account so you can breeze through the star ratings of those who share a high correlation to your taste, check in with the fanboys on IMDB and see if their average star rating conflicts with the critic aggregators (in this case it does), listen to the Chicago radio show, and best podcast of all time, Filmspotting and finally keep in mind that every once in a while the rest of humanity or at the least critics who make up a Rotten Tomatoes rating won't know a movie you'll love from a sow's belly.
