Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

  I'm an idiot.  I misread the date on the back of the DVD box as '97 instead of '91 and was super disappointed in myself because I remember being scared shitless of the old witch lady (Geraldine McEwan) and in '97 I was almost 16, way too old to be scared by that.  But in '91, I was about ten years old.  Which is perfectly acceptable since I hadn't yet inured myself to the kind of gore and violence I am now accustomed --and, in many cases, demand-- to see in my movies.

Moving on.

It's been years since I watched this film.  The first time, as recounted, scared the everliving fuck out of me so I avoided it for years.  I saw it again in my late teens/early twenties and sneered at the cheesiness of it all.  Now, at a hair away from 30, I can finally appreciate the humor in this movie.

Holy crap, Alan Rickman must have had a ball making this (and won a BAFTA for it!).  He steals every scene he's in, he has the best lines, and that whole rushed-marriage-quasi-rape scene has some of the best facial mugging I have ever seen.  Come on, when he puts his butt in the air and scissors Maid Marian's legs apart... I damn near fell off the couch laughing.

Does that make me a bad person?  I mean, obviously, I'd never laugh at an actual rape, or even one being played seriously, but this one?  Come on!  It's played like a cartoon.  Which makes sense, considering the PG-13 rating.  In fact, the only real curse word in the entire movie is said by Christian Slater, and I quote "Fuck me, he cleared it" after Robin Hood and Morgan Freeman catapult themselves over a castle wall.

For the million of you who were born in 1990 or later, Robin of Locksley (Kevin Costner) was captured during the Crusades and is facing execution.  He escapes with a Moor named Azeem (Morgan Freeman) and goes back to England, where he finds his family home a ruin and his father (Brian Blessed) killed on the orders of the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman).  He seeks refuge in Sherwood Forest and carries out a campaign of robberies to relieve the suffering of those made poor by the Sheriff's taxes, meanwhile wooing Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), the cousin of King Richard the Lion-hearted.  The Sheriff also wants Marian, because his pet witch tells him that he can marry her and put his own heir on the throne while Richard is away at the Crusades.

It's a bit of a bastardization of the Robin Hood legends but it is an entertaining film.  I recommend it to everyone over the age of 10.