Robin Hood is Ridley Scott‘s newest movie, starring Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow, William Hurt, Mark Strong, Oscar Isaac, Mark Addy, Matthew Macfadyen, Scott Grimes and Kevin Durand.

Plot:
King Richard Lionheart (Danny Huston) has been on his crusade for many years and is on his way home now. Unfortunately, he never reaches Britain, dying instead in one last battle.
In his army is the archer Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe), who by coincidence stumbles upon a massive conspiracy against Richard, led by Godfrey (Mark Strong), a confidant of Prince John (Oscar Isaac), but ultimately also plotting against John.
Anyway, Longstride takes on the identity of Robert Loxley and they story only gets more convoluted from there.

I hadn’t heard anything good about this movie beforehand (the most positive “review” was from a co-worker who said, “I expected it to be really bad and with that expectation, it was reasonably entertaining”), so I didn’t expect much (even though I’m one of the five people on earth who actually like Gladiator). But even so, I was incredibly disappointed. This movie is not only bad, no, even more damingly, it is boring as hell.

I think the first time I looked longingly at my watch and asked deadra how fucking long this movie was, was about 30 minutes in. And the movie is two and a half hours long. Not good. Not good at all. [In fact, I propose a radical redux of the film, where we cut all the scenes with Russel Crowe and make it a movie about Action!Marion, getting stalked by the Sheriff of Nottingham. And then we could make a bonus minisode about John.]

You know, how much I love Cate Blanchett. When even she is not enough to make a movie good, you know you’re doing something very, very wrong. For another example of the utter crappiness, you got two good-looking people [yes, I think Russell Crowe is good-looking. Don’t judge] in a story that screams old-school romance and both completely fail to conjure up any kind of sexual energy? That is unacceptable.

Generally speaking, that was one hell of a wasted supporting cast. But it especially hurt when it came to Oscar Isaac and Cate Blanchett.

Anyway, deadra, who is a real history buff, started cringing in her seat basically immediately after the start of the film. I didn’t mind as much, mostly because I didn’t get most of the stuff. And I also knew that this was going to be alternate history thing, so yay! But when they started travelling through cubist Britain (you travel south to north and you get first to Lincoln, then to Peterborough and then to Nottingham? And it takes you about three months to pillage your way but it only takes you an hour or so to welcome the French troups who are landing in Britain after what feels like a three week crossover of the channel? OH BOY), even I started to hurt. Wasn’t there anybody with an atlas on set? Couldn’t they have checked googlemaps? Wikipedia?

There was one scene, though, that rocked my socks off. [Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody in the theatre except deadra and me got the joke.] So, Robin/Robert has ditched his faithful companions in Nottingham to run after the widow of the guy he’s impersonating [classy]. The companions use this time to party like it’s 1199. The tavern they go to is full with horny women because the men of the village have all gone to war. And Scott Grimes turns to Kevin Durand and says, “I know how this works: You never go for the prettiest one.” *rofl* [Another movie that was extensively quoted: Lord of the Rings. I wish I was kidding.]

Man, I’ve already written 600 words and I haven’t even mentioned the Lost Boys yet. [Where did they come from, what are they doing and what the hell is their point? And why did they only get ponies and no horses?] Trust me, there would be much more to snark about. But I’ll leave it at that and just recommend that you stay far, far away from this movie.