Movie Review: Robin Hood

ROBIN HOOD 1/4
Universal Pictures, Rated PG-13

Shouting its way into theaters like a medieval music video, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood confuses noise with art and folklore with history. A kind of everything-you-always-didn’t-want-to-know-about-Robin Hood, the tedious and brash bow and arrow epic unspools painfully from start to finish like a grating yet somehow snooze-inducing high school history lesson.

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Russell Crowe personifies the word “grouchy” as the brawling barbarian, who arrives back from the Crusades downcast and despondent. But there’s barely time for sulking, as he’s caught up in battles with a monarchy ripping off a raucous population and a treacherous double agent conspiring to expedite a French invasion of England, along with the usual pillaging of the poor. Robin takes time out to locate Marion (Cate Blanchett) and inform the no-nonsense feminist peasant her long absentee warrior spouse was killed in yonder wars, prompting her father-in-law (the never disappointing Max von Sydow, making the most of a bad situation) to give the initially reluctant pair an offer they can’t refuse: To pretend wedded bliss so the government won’t seize his land from a mere woman and sole heir after his death.

Russell Crowe stars in Robin Hood

Seemingly as much a chore for viewers as the back-to-back 12th century skirmishes are for the characters, Robin Hood struts its unearned self-seriousness like a Wagnerian opera. And as if to cover up bland dialogue, Scott drowns out the very occasional conversations with an earsplitting soundtrack from start to finish, which at times competes with the tavern strumming, serf singalongs, church bells, trumpets and kettle drums. It’s as if he is substituting a musical score that assaults the senses in the absence of the usual machine guns and car chases.

Muddy-hued merrymaking at the local dark ages party animal pub does materialize occasionally, along with reticent romance between Crowe and Blanchett that’s summed up in a single fleeting PG kiss in the midst of R-ish stabbing, slaughtering and arrow piercing. But hold on to your hoods: The biggest shocker is the epilogue, announcing what you’ve just endured has likely been a prequel to the legend that’s just begun. And so with little robbing and even less hoods in this outlaws and in-laws saga, which winds up robbing the poor to give to the rich at the box office cash register.