Starring Cary Elwes, Richard Lewis, Roger Rees, Amy Yasbeck, Avery Schreiber, Dave Chappelle, Tracey Ullman
Directed by Mel Brooks
Expectations: Moderate. I love Mel Brooks but his later period stuff generally leaves me a bit wanting.
I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I decided to watch it because I have no interest in the new Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe version, but I thought it might be fun to get on the Robin Hood train anyway. At a base level I did like it, but that just isn’t enough these days. I didn’t expect this to be anything great, but my past experience with Mel Brooks left open the door of hope and I took the plunge.
If you’ve seen any other filmed version of Robin Hood you know the basic story here. Specifically, if you’ve seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves you know pretty much the exact story. I happen to have seen that film dozens of times while I was growing up so I know it well. I recently re-watched it about a year ago, so it’s still fresh in my mind. That film didn’t hold up very well, and neither does the parody version. There’s definitely some great jokes here, but for every one of those, there’s five okay jokes to go with it. You’re left with a film that starts out pretty good, but never rises above the source material.