Robin and Marian (1976)

Well, that was a complete waste of time! I didn't see any great love story there. Robin was a pathetic asshole and Marian was a fool to waste her time on him.

I love Richard Lester's films - I love Audrey Hepburn - I like Sean Connery,Nicol Williamson, Ronnie Barker, Denholm Elliott, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris. However I really dislike this film - nothing about it works with the exception of the art direction. It sounds as though the actors dubbed their voices on after filming so it does not sound quite right. The story is uninteresting and the action sequences are half-hearted. I was expecting so much better after the superb Musketeers films which Lester made. There is no sexual chemistry between Connery and Hepburn and I find Connery's retread of every other character he has ever played, i.e.Sean Connery, is beginning to irritate me. We should have demanded so much more from him over the years. The most convincing actor in the whole thing is Ronnie Barker as Friar Tuck - he so much becomes his characters that Ronnie Barker disappears totally.

Aging Robin Hood (Sean Connery) and Little John (Nicol Williamson) return home to England after twenty years fighting in the Crusades. They find the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) still in charge and Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn) now a nun. The cast is great. Connery and Hepburn are both charmingly likable. I would watch Robert Shaw read the phone book. The problem is that the film is too dark and the ending too depressing. Instead of being a rousing "one last adventure" story, it's a sort of "we're old and death is all we have to look forward to" story. It has a dour look similar to the revisionist westerns of the '70s, not to mention the same pathetic fatalism. It's worth seeing for the cast, who do their best to breathe life into things. But there's only so much they can do.

The original title for this movie was "The Death Of Robin Hood" but the studio wanted a more commercial title, and sent out all the wrong messages to cinema goers. Following on from what many consider to be his best role outside of James Bond, that of Daniel Dravot in "The Man Who Would Be King", Sean Connery plays Robin Hood (a balding, grey bearded, bruised, scarred and arthritic one, but still Robin Hood) opposite the still impossibly gorgeous Katherine Hepburn as Maid Marian. This is no swashbuckling agile Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn or Kevin Costner. This is a much bleaker, more realistic Robin. But still a Robin who could not resist a good fight, and was trying to regain his youth by reliving past exploits. Robert Shaw's arrogant but intelligent Sheriff of Nottingham was everything you'd expect from the hard drinking Irish man. It was a shame he would die only two years later, as for all his flaws he was one hell of an actor.The final fight between Robin and the Sheriff was brutal as two worn out old men (barely able to lift their swords towards the end) hacked away at each other. The mood of the movie is realistically bleak at times, yet since Richard Lester was director, we get some silly scenes with humour in that seem to be totally out of place and that almost belong in another movie!! I don't know why he insisted on doing this in his movies (see Superman 2, where during Superman battling the three Kriptonian Super Villains a load of awful comedy scenes (wigs flying off, ice cream hitting people in faces) are present that takes away from the intensity of it all!! Of the supporting cast Richard Harris has a cameo as Richard The Lionheart (same role Connery would cameo in Costner's "Prince Of Thieves") and Denholm Elliot is as reliable as ever.I think this movie is badly under appreciated by the critics. And maybe if they had stuck with the original title, and sold it differently it might have done differently.