With a Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of 11%, this sounded dire. Given that Robin Hood probably never existed, considerations of historical accuracy are I suppose moot — but the idea that a Crusader would have teamed up with a Muslim Berber is ridiculous, even if this one (Jamie Foxx) is African-American — but in fact none of this matters, as Taron Egerton and Foxx are skilled actors and Foxx, at least, has considerable screen presence, and between them they carry the whole thing off, sort of.
Egerton plays Robin of Loxley — yes, I thought it was “Sherwood” too — as a sort of ADHD-tinged teenage scamp to Fox’s more experienced and tougher-looking Little John, and it rarely looks like it’s set earlier than around A.D. 2014 — check out the costumes for some of the most implausible medieval apparel since Richard Gere-King Arthur abomination First Knight — but it’s as entertaining as any light-hearted silliness of this sort, and far less earnest than the Costner and Crowe iterations of the last few years.
I don’t really recall much about Will Scarlett’s character from previous outings, but in this he’s a ranting, overbearing Ulsterman, which seems a bit weird, and Eve Henson as Maid Marian is a somewhat aloof sort of Irish beauty, and not at all what I would have pictured in the role, but my view will have been shaped by Errol Flynn-type renderings of men in tights viewed when I was six, but committed to film decades earlier, so it’s not surprising it’s nothing to do with what modern audiences want or expect. Adolescents may find it an interesting distraction from playing video games and smoking skunk — as an adult, or even child over the age of sixteen, avoid, unless you want to lose IQ points.
FATAL VISIONS 