Robin Hood Prince of Thieves - Back-filling my pop culture knowledge

As anyone who follows me on Facebook will know, I watched Robin Hood Prince of Thieves on Friday night last week.  I would say that the reasons for this are too long to go into here, but I'm not paying anyone for my column inches so I might as well tell you.  Until last Friday I had never seen this particular slice of early-90s pop fiction, and when I chanced upon a DVD of it on my shelf while I was hunting for something more substantial to watch last Friday I decided it was time to fill this particular hole in my pop culture knowledge.  I vaguely recalled a friend lending me the DVD ages ago along with her copy of The Sound of Music as part of a kind of cultural exchange.  I watched The Sound of Music right away, but Robin Hood had sat on the shelf untouched for years.

I know that reams of print have been written about the terribleness of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, the mind-bending abuse of English geography (Apparently Nottingham is one day's walk from Dover, going via Northumbria) and fantastic pantomime performance by Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham.  There's not a lot I can add to any of that, save to say that I agree with everything everyone seems to think about the film.  It's a terrible film littered with bad acting, plot contrivances, derisory characterisation of woman as either damsels in distress or aged crones and ethnic minorities as scimitar-wielding wise men and - worst of all surely - under-uses Brian Blessed (though he does shout - once).  Every battle scene fails to tread the line between being perilous enough to make the action seem dramatic and comic enough to make the film passable by the censors for a audience of children; whenever the action is ramped up it looks out of place, whenever things are toned down they look cheesy.

To be honest though, I can hardly complain.  It's not like anyone ever recommended it - I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I put the DVD in the PS3.  The film's one saving grace (everyone seems to agree on this) is the scenery-obliterating performance by Alan Rickman, who gurns his way through an endless string of ridiculously over-the-top lines while exuding the sweaty bug-eyed look of a demented serial killer.  It's a performance any pantomime bad guy would sell his soul for, and the one highlight of the entire experience.

So with this out of the way that's another pop culture classic off the list.  I guess the next target's going to be Titanic.  That's right folks - I've never seen Titanic.  And at 3 hours long I'm not sure I'll ever get around to bothering.  Let me know if I'm wrong!