Boring AND Offensive! The Best of Both Worlds (AKA A review of Robin Hood)

SPOILER WARNING so don't complain to me later.

So I went to see Robin Hood last weekend. And I complained about it to some people in real life. Then I remembered that I have this space on the nets where I can complain and people can either choose to read it or not and they don't have to just listen to me for the sake of our real life relationship. So now I'm going to blog about how much I hated this movie and it was slow and dumb and I just wanted to go home and play with my dog. Really it's more of a set of vague impressions of how much I hated this film than an in-depth review because it's been about a week since I saw it, and all that's still in my head are these complaints.





Point the first: Russell Crowe's accent was balls. That is to say, it was terrible. He has been doing the accent from Gladiator in all of his historical-drama-fiction thingies since Gladiator, and it does not fit every situation, OK, Russell Crowe? Ridley Scott, how much of a budget did you have for this movie? You should have made King John's armour out of FAKE gold and paid a really good dialect coach to train Russell Crowe to either DO the accent ALL THE TIME or not try it at all. Watching all those seasons of Coronation Street did not work.

Point B: I wanted to watch a movie about Robin Hood. Robin Hood is supposed to steal from the rich and give to the poor. That's his WHOLE THING. He does this by wearing a green HOOD and jumping out of the woods with a bow and arrow and stealing money from rich dudes. Then he gives the money to poor dudes. That was what I wanted to see! Some guerilla warfare Robin Hood shit, like I remember from the cartoon and also that Disney movie with the foxes (I'm not linking to that because if you don't know what I'm talking about we're not friends). My understanding is that Robin Hood did this kind of shit all the fucking time and that is why he's famous enough to even make a movie about. That happened in ONE scene in the movie. And I was so excited, guys. I was like "Finally, this movie is going to be about Robin Hood, now!" and then it was about the Crusades again and sort of the Magna Carta? And I was like "Fuck". True story.

Point Threve: I was all excited about Cate Blanchett, too. Because Cate Blanchett is a BAMF. This is known. I thought that Maid Marion would be maybe all a feminist icon and shit. Or that she would wear one of those princess hats that's really tall and pointy and has that little scarf of fabric coming down from the top (I admit, most of what I know from Robin Hood is gleaned from that one Canadian cartoon. I think Marion wore one of those in the cartoon. She was princessy.) I was disappointed on all counts. She had some badass moments (like telling Robin Hood not to try and get in her grill while she was sleeping or she would feed his manhood to the goats) and was pretty in charge of her land and servants while her husband was away fighting brown people for those ten years before she was ever on screen. As soon as Robin shows up, though, everything goes tits up for Marion.

She is threatened with rape, she finds out that her husband is dead -- meaning that she will lose her land once the father-in-law dies, she is forced to pretend Robin is her husband so the aforementioned won't happen, her father-in-law is brutally murdered, her village is attacked, she is threatened with rape again (because that is one of a very limited number of interesting things that can happen to a woman, none of which don't involve a man), she gets to fight in battle! in armour that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere but whatever this is the only good thing that happens! Then she almost gets to defeat the villain but her ovaries get in the way, so instead she just falls down, almost drowns in the surf and Robin has to save her ass and then also defeat the villain with an improbable long-distance arrow shot. See how my description of Marion mostly involves things that men do to/around her? That's just how the movie is written, folks. I wish it were not so. I was very disappointed in Cate Blanchett for condoning this kind of fuckery, and I wish that Sienna Miller had played Marion as originally cast, because then I probably wouldn't even give a shit.

Point IV: This is kind of a small one, but it really really pissed me off. OK. So when Robin Hood moves into Marion's house, he is all nasty and smelly from fighting in the Crusades for like, ten years. So he needs a bath. But he's also wearing heavy-ass chain mail. He needs someone to help him take it off, and also marvel at his extremely manly chest and arms (not too cut, mind you, because that's a little too Jake Gyllenhaal amirite?!). This is legit, guys. Chain mail is heavy as shit. You really do have to bend over to get that shirt off over your head. I liked that they reflected that little bit of historical business. AND THEN! At the end of the movie, when Marion trips over her uterus and falls into the water, Robin Hood picks her up and carries her to safety. Wait, wha...? So this dude can't get his own mail shirt off over his head, but he can pick up Marion's whole body, clad in her own chain-mail, small-clothes and helmet (but probably not sword, because she probably dropped it because it wasn't very lady-like to have it in the first place), while also wearing HIS OWN chain mail, helmet, bow, etc. That is stupid. I hate this fucking stupid, inconsistent, crappy, misogynist movie. Fuck.

So I think that's it, I guess. I think maybe Ridley Scott gets a little bit of a pass? Because he made Alien. And Ellen Ripley is pretty much the baddest of all badasses, and the BAMF Queen of Awesome-Town. To be honest, I don't really know from the rest of Ridley Scott's movies, but Alien is awesome and feminist and I love it and it makes me think that maybe Ridley Scott is awesome. Robin Hood is kind of interrupting that for me, and it's really disappointing.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the movie is like three hours long? Skip it. F--