THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 6/11/10

 

I never got into those bonehead action-adventure shows such as "Xena" and "Hercules", so THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (1997), which is pretty much cut from the same bolt of chintz, didn't exactly set me all a-quiver.  (Get it?  Arrows?  Quiver?  Ha, ha.)  Fortunately, it's a definite cut above the SyFy Channel dud BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST, although it makes the BBC's recent "Robin Hood" series look like "Masterpiece Theater." 

These aren't your standard "men in tights"--in fact, Robin (American actor Matthew Porretta, who appeared in the Mel Brooks comedy), with his black T-shirt and leather pants, looks like he just got through shopping at Ye Olde Gap.  The main group is pared down to four this time, with Robin, Marion, Little John, and Friar Tuck the only members of the merry band and characters such as Will Scarlet and Allan A Dale nowhere in sight.  An ineffectual Prince John makes a few appearances but not enough to establish any kind of continuing storyline, and Sir Guy of Gisborne shows up exactly once.  Even Robin's traditional nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham, has been abandoned to make room for all the mongols, vikings, wizards, witches, dragons, and other nuisances who occupy Robin's spare time when he isn't robbing from the rich. 

Little John (Richard Ashton) reminds me of a long-haired version of Jody McCrae's Deadhead from the "Beach Party" movies, only dumber.  Surprisingly enough, Friar Tuck (Martyn Ellis) actually looks like the short, squat friar we've come to expect.  Perpetually smirking Robin himself is anything but the standard action hero--he's more like a wiseguy slacker who's working on his first goatee.  It's hard to imagine him as the beloved savior of the English common man and scourge of the pampered upper class.

As for Marion, she's one of those irritating medieval feminist types whose specialty is bashing guys in the crotch.  In one episode, she even teaches a "self-defense class" for some village women who are being harrassed by amorous soldiers.  Heaven forbid anyone would call this Marion a "maid"--even her name has been masculinized.  Still, one of the most stimulating aspects of the show is watching the gorgeous Anna Galvin run around in her revealing miniskirt-and-boots superheroine costume.  The show itself, in fact, is pretty much Cleavage City, with enough upper-boobage on display to send the adolescent male audience that it's geared for into fits (not to mention us old pervs). 

You can't really blame the producers for having to work within a limited budget, but using the same castle gate and stone corridors in every episode does tend to nudge the show into "Jason of Star Command" territory at times.  The shoddy digital effects also add to the show's low-rent atmosphere.  On the plus side, copious amounts of stock National Geographic footage augment the Lithuanian forest locations rather nicely. 

Aside from a couple of the leads, the acting is generally pretty bad, with few castmembers even attempting British accents.  Much of the dialogue is willfully anachronistic, as in the following examples:  "Move it or lose it!" "Talk about a security system!" "Let's go kick some butt!"  In one scene, Marion remarks that a bound Robin seems to be getting a little too much into "that bondage thing." 

Each episode is loaded with fights between Robin's band and various sword-slinging foes, but the action direction and choreography are sluggish and awkward.  Bad guys invariably stumble around as though in a daze and fall over unconscious whenever the good guys poke something in their direction.  Once in a while there's a fairly decent swordfight, but again it's all directed and edited in such an offhand way that it's rarely ever convincing.  And some of the free-for-all fight finales are so goofy that I almost expected them to be accompanied by a Monkees song.

With Robin no longer matching wits with the Sheriff of Nottingham, and all the old political intrigue replaced by more juvenile plotlines, the stories are laden with fanciful villains and lots of sorcery.  In one episode, Genghis Khan's younger brother leads his mongols against Robin Hood in hopes of gaining fame ("My stupid brother Genghis gets all the publicity!" he complains).  In another, a motley group of vikings land ashore and threaten our heroes by summoning the power of the Norse gods.  Cackling witches, spell-casting wizards, and even a crashed space alien with a really bad makeup job take turns causing trouble in Sherwood Forest.  It's sort of fun if you don't take any of it seriously for a second--the occasional appearance of Christopher Lee as the good wizard Olwyn helps--but the show tends to give off a garish, bad-Irwin Allen vibe that I found somewhat unpalatable at times. 

The four-disc DVD set from Warner Brothers, which contains all 13 first-season episodes, is in fullscreen with Dolby 2.0 sound.  There are no subtitles or extras.  This is a manufacture-on-demand product and is sold exclusively on the Warner Bros. online shop, the first of several contemporary and classic TV series/season sets that WB plans to release.  I'm looking forward to seeing what their next titles will be. 

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON has no finesse whatsoever--it's just a blunt instrument whacking the viewer over the head with crude, dumb-fun entertainment.  If you surrender to it, you may enjoy it for what it is.  If not, this half-baked batch of goofy hijinks may have you fleeing Sherwood Forest on the next thing running.


Buy it at WBshop.com

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle

BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

 

Originally posted on 2/13/10

 

 

After having recently watched the third season of the British TV series "Robin Hood", I found SyFy Channel's BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST to be woefully bland and uninspired by comparison. Even the fact that it has a big, dumb bad-CGI dragon flying around doesn't help.

In a flashback, young Robin Hood watches as the dragon kills the Sheriff of Nottingham and is felled by arrows from his father and the Sheriff's successor, Malcolm (Julian Sands). Wounded, the creature reverts to its true form, that of a naked woman named Alina (Katharine Isabelle, GINGER SNAPS, FREDDY VS. JASON, CARRIE remake) with hyper regenerative powers. Malcolm wants to capture her in hopes that he can use her blood to give himself immortality, and when Robin's dad objects, Malcolm kills him.

Jump forward a couple of decades, and it's the old story of Robin stealing from the rich and giving to the poor while Malcolm, now the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, struggles endlessly to capture him and gain the favor of the equally-evil Prince John. He orders Alina, whose still-beating heart he holds hostage in a jar, to find Robin and his merry men and kill them. Robin, meanwhile, sets off on a quest to enter the mystical Dark Woods (from which Alina was banished as a child) and find the Keepers of the Trees, who possess a plant which can neutralize her dragon powers and make her mortal.

You're probably well aware that "Robin Hood" stories don't usually feature stuff like sorcerers and flying dragons, but this is SyFy and they have to squeeze some wince-inducing CGI in there somewhere. The idea that somewhere in Sherwood Forest there's this big floating doorway into the Dark Woods which has somehow escaped the notice of the general public for several years is equally farfetched, and the thought of Robin Hood and his small and lackluster band of Merry Men wandering around in there trying to locate the "Keepers of the Trees" struck me as a pretty non-thrilling quest.

Besides Little John and Will Scarlett running into some typically bad-CGI wolves along the way, their lengthy encounter with these robed bores is about as enchanting as a Rotary Club meeting. ("It is the law of the woods," their leader informs Robin at one point, to which he responds, "Where I come from, it is the men who make the laws...not the trees.") Later, they get captured by the Sheriff's men and, after the usual clever escape from jail, have it out with the bad guys as Robin and Malcolm go at it sword-to-sword in desultory fashion. To make things worse, our hero performs rather unheroically during this battle and comes off as a decidedly smaller-than-life character.

With his fussily-trimmed beard, costume-like clothing, and less than rugged demeanor, Robin Dunne makes one of the least impressive Robin Hoods ever. Mark Gibbon is a passable Little John (although both he and Katharine Isabelle currently fail to list this film on their IMDb pages), while Richard de Klerk's Will Scarlett reminds me of a belligerent Gilligan. Erica Durance makes a nice-looking Maid Marian, but since this is a "modern" retelling she is given the fighting skills of a warrior woman and further diminishes our hero by besting him with a staff.

As Prince John, David Richmond-Peck does a fairly good job although he resembles a grown-up version of Butch from "Our Gang" and falls far short of Toby Stephens' delightful interpretation of the character in the recent TV series. Julian Sands, of course, does his best as the Sheriff but can't manage to rise above the dull script (which boasts such anachronistic lines as "I've taken out an insurance policy") and murky, unappealing production values.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Surround 5.1, with English subtitles. A "making-of" featurette and a trailer are the extras.

Okay if there's nothing else to watch but hardly worth going out of your way to see, BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST is a lackluster effort that may leave you pining for Errol Flynn, or even Kevin Costner.

BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST -- DVD Review by Porfle