Review Tuesday: 'Robin Hood'

Today’s ‘Review Tuesday’. When I was a lad, a big hero of mine was Richard Greene [1]. But to me he wasn’t Richard Greene. Rather he was Robin Hood – star of The Adventures of Robin Hood. This popular British TV series comprising 143 half-hour episodes, aired from 1955 (when I was eight) to 1960 (when I was 13) [2]. I relished its title sequence [3] and also its theme song and music [4]. My only regret was as colour TV didn’t exist back then, I didn’t get to see what lincoln green [5] looked like. Russell Crowe, who plays the eponymous hero of the 2010 big-budget epic film Robin Hood [6, 7], didn’t bother with lincoln green clothing. Crowe’s is a tough and violent Robin who naturally shot arrows enviably straight. He got to rescue Marian, but try as he did he couldn’t rescue the movie (which he co-produced): Apart from Robin no characters were developed; Robin’s band of merry men was merely incidental; the Sheriff was seemingly included because his omission would’ve been noticed; and only once did Robin rob the rich to give to the poor. Phooey. The film ends with him joining his men and Marian in Sherwood Forest – signalling that this 140-minute disappointment was positioned as a prequel to a sequel. But the sequel’s unlikely to happen – ten weeks after the film’s launch it’d grossed only US$105M against its estimated US$200M budget [8]. I rate it two stars. Give me Richard Greene’s Robin Hood any day.