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Robin and Marian
Columbia/Tri-Star // PG // July 16, 2002
List Price: $24.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Legends often make for entertaining movies, and while the legend of Robin Hood hasn't been revisited quite as often as that of King Arthur, it's a popular theme. Robin and Marian puts a twist on the usual retelling of the tale: it's set twenty years after the famous events of Robin Hood's youth. After his confrontation with the Sheriff of Nottingham, it seems, Robin went off to the Crusades with King Richard. As the film opens, we find Robin (Sean Connery) to be an old man now, tired of the war and ready to return to Sherwood Forest and lovely Marian (Audrey Hepburn).
Robin and Marian is a very strange movie; there's really no better way to put it than that. It's afflicted with a fundamental incompatibility of tone, as it attempts to be both a deeply serious drama and a slapstick comedy. There's nothing inherently wrong with mixing serious drama and silly comedy; for instance, many of Shakespeare's most serious plays interject comic scenes midway, like the porter scene in Macbeth. Tastes change, however. As a 21st-century viewer, I tend to favor a more subtle mix of tones (and so do most viewers, which is why most film versions of Shakespeare, when they're edited for time, tend to cut out most of the comedic portions). I do enjoy dramas that are leavened with a touch of humor, if it's done well, but there has to be some compatibility in tone; in Robin and Marian, the film tries to unite two different ends of the dramatic spectrum, and the effect is like combining chocolate and onions in the same dish. I like chocolate, and I like onions, but I'd rather have them served separately.
Part of the problem with Robin and Marian is that I'm not sure director Richard Lester ever really settled on what he wanted to do. The film's opening scene, with clumsy knights in tin-can helmets mounting a comically ineffective siege on a deserted castle, could have come right out of Monty Python. The comic tone continues as Robin has a conversation with the castle's lone guardian, a half-blind old man, about a reputed treasure that turns out to be nothing more than a large carved rock that they found in a turnip field. Then a boorish King Richard arrives on the scene, and the old man hurls an arrow in a fit of pique and actually impales Richard in the neck, at which point Richard has his troops slaughter all the women and children in the castle. In a nutshell, this is the kind of discrepancy in tone that persists throughout the movie.
The film also seems to be a homage to the legend of Robin Hood, and as such it looks like it will be most accessible to die-hard Robin Hood fans, who will enjoy spotting the older incarnations of Robin's Merry Men, like Tuck and Will, and the Sheriff of Nottingham; but while it's playing on the legendary aspect of Robin, the film is also depicting a realistically grungy and poverty-stricken medieval England. Or at least it's trying to, I think; there's still an odd discrepancy in visual tone between the convincingly squalid village people and the finery of the kings and princes, which looks like it's taken straight out of a Hollywood props box. Even the cinematography seems out of place. There are numerous long, sweeping shots of the landscape, lingering lovingly on the heroes riding their horses and so on, but the landscape itself is quite mundane.
Then we get to the ending. Without spoiling it, I'll go so far as to say that the way the story is wrapped up is, in my opinion, deeply weird and in fact rather disturbing. And it doesn't really fit the tone of the film up to that point, either, so I'm completely in the dark about where Lester intended to take the story.
With a framework like that, it's not surprising that even Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn can't manage to make something worthwhile out of Robin and Marian. I get the sense that they're really trying their best at getting into the spirit of the material, but it just never really comes together.
Video
Columbia/Tri-Star has presented Robin and Marian in an anamorphically-enhanced widescreen image that preserves its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The print seems fairly clean, with most scenes free of noise, and with only an occasional print flaw. Some scenes show some grain, especially dimly-lit ones at night. The colors are drab overall, with no vibrancy to them. Everything looks washed-out, including black, which lacks the necessary darkness. Close-up shots in daylight are sharp, but middle- to longer-distance shots do tend to be blurry.
Audio
The Dolby 2.0 track is about average, and is adequate for the most part. The dialogue occasionally drops in volume enough to be hard to catch. At normal conversational tones the sound quality is good; I did notice a touch of tinniness in the sound when voices were raised, though.
Extras
Robin and Marian is almost bare-bones, with the only special feature being a couple of trailers.
Final thoughts
Honestly, I wanted to like this movie; I love historically-based films, and Sean Connery is an actor whose films I almost always enjoy. But Robin and Marian ends up as an odd and slightly disturbing muddle that I really can't recommend to anyone except the most devoted fans of the Robin Hood legend, and even then, just for curiosity's sake.
Robin and Marian is a very strange movie; there's really no better way to put it than that. It's afflicted with a fundamental incompatibility of tone, as it attempts to be both a deeply serious drama and a slapstick comedy. There's nothing inherently wrong with mixing serious drama and silly comedy; for instance, many of Shakespeare's most serious plays interject comic scenes midway, like the porter scene in Macbeth. Tastes change, however. As a 21st-century viewer, I tend to favor a more subtle mix of tones (and so do most viewers, which is why most film versions of Shakespeare, when they're edited for time, tend to cut out most of the comedic portions). I do enjoy dramas that are leavened with a touch of humor, if it's done well, but there has to be some compatibility in tone; in Robin and Marian, the film tries to unite two different ends of the dramatic spectrum, and the effect is like combining chocolate and onions in the same dish. I like chocolate, and I like onions, but I'd rather have them served separately.
Part of the problem with Robin and Marian is that I'm not sure director Richard Lester ever really settled on what he wanted to do. The film's opening scene, with clumsy knights in tin-can helmets mounting a comically ineffective siege on a deserted castle, could have come right out of Monty Python. The comic tone continues as Robin has a conversation with the castle's lone guardian, a half-blind old man, about a reputed treasure that turns out to be nothing more than a large carved rock that they found in a turnip field. Then a boorish King Richard arrives on the scene, and the old man hurls an arrow in a fit of pique and actually impales Richard in the neck, at which point Richard has his troops slaughter all the women and children in the castle. In a nutshell, this is the kind of discrepancy in tone that persists throughout the movie.
The film also seems to be a homage to the legend of Robin Hood, and as such it looks like it will be most accessible to die-hard Robin Hood fans, who will enjoy spotting the older incarnations of Robin's Merry Men, like Tuck and Will, and the Sheriff of Nottingham; but while it's playing on the legendary aspect of Robin, the film is also depicting a realistically grungy and poverty-stricken medieval England. Or at least it's trying to, I think; there's still an odd discrepancy in visual tone between the convincingly squalid village people and the finery of the kings and princes, which looks like it's taken straight out of a Hollywood props box. Even the cinematography seems out of place. There are numerous long, sweeping shots of the landscape, lingering lovingly on the heroes riding their horses and so on, but the landscape itself is quite mundane.
Then we get to the ending. Without spoiling it, I'll go so far as to say that the way the story is wrapped up is, in my opinion, deeply weird and in fact rather disturbing. And it doesn't really fit the tone of the film up to that point, either, so I'm completely in the dark about where Lester intended to take the story.
With a framework like that, it's not surprising that even Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn can't manage to make something worthwhile out of Robin and Marian. I get the sense that they're really trying their best at getting into the spirit of the material, but it just never really comes together.
Video
Columbia/Tri-Star has presented Robin and Marian in an anamorphically-enhanced widescreen image that preserves its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The print seems fairly clean, with most scenes free of noise, and with only an occasional print flaw. Some scenes show some grain, especially dimly-lit ones at night. The colors are drab overall, with no vibrancy to them. Everything looks washed-out, including black, which lacks the necessary darkness. Close-up shots in daylight are sharp, but middle- to longer-distance shots do tend to be blurry.
Audio
The Dolby 2.0 track is about average, and is adequate for the most part. The dialogue occasionally drops in volume enough to be hard to catch. At normal conversational tones the sound quality is good; I did notice a touch of tinniness in the sound when voices were raised, though.
Extras
Robin and Marian is almost bare-bones, with the only special feature being a couple of trailers.
Final thoughts
Honestly, I wanted to like this movie; I love historically-based films, and Sean Connery is an actor whose films I almost always enjoy. But Robin and Marian ends up as an odd and slightly disturbing muddle that I really can't recommend to anyone except the most devoted fans of the Robin Hood legend, and even then, just for curiosity's sake.
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