Movie Review: The Latest "Robin Hood" Ready, Aim, Misfires

Jamie Foxx and Taron Eagerton star in the thousandth movie based on Robin Hood.

Thief or Lord? Whatever You Call Him Robin Hood Can't Steal Our Love. 

Robin Hood’s opening voiceover teases that this is the Robin Hood story you never knew, that everything else is just myths and bedtime stories. Robin (Taron Egerton) is Lord Locksley, young, roguishly handsome, and with a whole lotta love to give. Things get hot and steamy with Maid Marian-- reimagined now as Marian the Irish horsethief-- minutes after he stops her from stealing his, well, horse. Instalove strikes and they get hitched. But their year of blissful canoodling is cut short when the Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn) sends draft notices to the nobles to join the Crusades. “Rob” is called to arms and sent to the front lines in the hostile and barren deserts of Arabia.

Questionable medieval combat (erm an enemy crossbow that shoots arrows machine gun fast) and generic action sequences fill the high def screen. Robin’s two years at war is blurry camera work and frantic choreography that is just mildly entertaining. When Robin returns to Nottingham after he gets an arrow boo-boo he finds his castle Marian-less and in shambles with a note that the Sheriff seized it as collateral. Oh and he gets the news from his scene-stealing bro (and one of the most humorous characters in the movie) Friar Tuck (Tim Minchin) that he “died” in battle. Ouch.

Accompanied by an enemy POW he set free (Jamie Foxx), a textbook Magical Negro trope* in action, Lord Locksley (as he is once again) discovers that Marian (Eve Hewson) is remarried, the nobles are still d-bags, and the Sheriff is a money stealing, traitorous, sleazeball. Good times! The Sheriff’s greed and ruthlessness leave the humble people of Nottingham homeless and banished to THE MINES. A dreary, gray, and grimy world of smoggy sky and charred stones. Little bursts of contained fires of the likes that appear in Hollywood studio tours and in the Making Special Effects In Your Movie For Dummies book flare up every five seconds.

The hapless and hurting Robin is guided by his own personal Magical Negro*, “John” (Jamie Foxx), and they concoct a plan. By day Robin will be Lord Locksley, cozying up to Sheriff Notty. By night he’ll be a hooded philanthropic thief! JSYK: the classic Robin Hood tale.

John (Foxx) and Robin (Egerton) incognito as the shady Sherrif mwahahahs over the people of Nottingham.





As Robin of Locksley Taron Egerton has the energy and charisma to make the bandit hero real. What really blows is that Robin Hood’s clumsy script and plot barely plays to his talents. As two-time Kingsman: The Secret Service series lead Taron’s more than proved he’s got comedy chops. Robin Hood grossly underuses and undervalues his bold and comedic swagger. He gets some scenes where he’s devilishly cocky and clever but they’re sandwiched between larger scenes of him moping over Marian. How about less angst and more recklessness and daring. Crank his charisma up to eleven! Taron Egerton can do it!


As Robin Hood’s iconic antagonist the Sheriff of Nottingham, Ben Mendelsohn’s prominent lisp, frequent bouts of screaming, and finely tailored JCPenney suit make him a straight up caricature baddie among the likes of Eddie Redmayne’s villain in Jupiter Ascending and that scaly, dragon-hating bag of dicks from Eragon. In other words, he’s laughably NOT scary.


All his talk about boiling people who piss him off in their own pee, and his dream to hang all the nobles to see them shat themselves, just makes him super creepazoid with a thing for human excrement. Maybe this is meant to make him more menacing or disturbing, but with his unoriginal backstory (young lords spanked him with brooms and forced him to chug their cheap ass brandy 40 years ago) the Sheriff feels like nothing more than a medieval Law and Order murderer of the week.


He opens up to Robin FAR too quickly which leads to the church head Cardinal (who the Sheriff is in cahoots with) conveniently sharing every detail of his wicked plan. With Robin in the room. Robin, who’s only been around the Sheriff for like A WEEK and who the Cardinal NEVER MET BEFORE. He boasts about his plan to seize power and take down the English crown in a run on sentence ghastly enough to give your English Lit professor a stroke. Behold, the info dump!

Sharp-eyed viewers will notice the handy brass knuckles built into the bow. ROB is street fight ready!!

Of all the characters in this Robin...excuse me, ROB the HOOD story Marian’s the least interesting and the most disposable. A shallow end of the gene pool level moron, Marian’s only good for modeling Macy’s department store fashion collections IN THE MEDIEVAL ERA, and shrieking “ROB! ROB! ROB!” at the top of her lungs when Robin (who’s in DISGUISE as The Hood) is surrounded by enemies ready to stab him.

After Robin’s tragic “death”, she marries Will (an unrecognizable Jamie Dornan), a for-the-people man. When Robin reappears she latches back him, obvi, with no internal struggle about kicking Will to the curb. Marian’s reunion with Robin is so rushed and hazy that it’s hard AF to root for them as a couple. When Will, or Husband #2 as he also answers to, ends up in a perilous position Marian’s reaction sums up her whole character.

Verbatim, “Eh. Whatevz. Let the fucker die.”

She has Robin again soz she doesn’t need Will’s peen anymore.

Robin’s reaction?

Charging back into the city like a BEAST to drag Will’s barely-breathing, borderline dead ass to safety. Because he’s Rob! I mean ROBIN Hood and his motto is steal from the rich and give to the poor no man left behind!

"COME AT ME BRO!" 'nuff said.

The abysmal script is only worsened by the director’s inability to commit to one time period: medieval or modern. So they settled for smearing them together like putting half a tuna fish sandwich on half of a PB & J sandwich. Gross and WTF. Take the celebration to welcome the Cardinal to Nottingham. The shindig is blinged out with casino roulette wheels, Flapper styled sequins, gems and jewelry and runway ready designer fur coats. What medieval welcome feast for the clergy would be anything like this copycat Capital party from The Hunger Games!?

The costume design is hardly historical either. There are a couple outfits that truly fit the characters and at least pretended to be vaguely historical… but for the most part, they were so ridiculously modern that they ruined a lot of the movie. Robin’s pleather Hood getup is dope but the rest of the outfits were just #nope. The costume designer raided the Old Navy and GAP clearance section and chose to dress the cast in plaid button-downs, hoodies, and moto jackets. And in Marian’s case lacy Victoria’s Secret nightgowns, Forever21 v-necks, and the lowest cut shirts possible. Perhaps the funniest is Robin’s Rocky fitness montage where he bench presses carriage wheels in a wife beater tank and sweats.

I won’t pooh-pooh Robin Hood entirely. It’s HILARIOUS. Unlike the action-drama it masquerades as in the movie trailers it’s an unintentionally funny, so bad its good**, two hours. By trying so hard to be a dark and dangerous never-before-told origin story it nosedives into absurdity. That combined with a scrambled modern-medieval universe, a so-so script and campy acting make Robin Hood a straight up comedy. It might just become a cult classic in twenty years.

The ultimate verdict? Wait for the DVD release. With its unintentional comedy aside Robin Hood is an overly long movie weighed down by lazy storytelling, painfully generic action sequences, and a ho-hum anticlimactic plot. It doesn’t deliver on its promise to tell us a different Robin Hood story nor does it have any understanding of the Medieval era it (maybe) wants to take place in. The last ten minutes of the movie is one of the most compelling scenes, but it’s too little too late. Robin may be able to sprint across the screen, firing arrow after arrow while stealing piles of gold but after watching Robin Hood, it’s obvious the one thing he can’t steal is our enthusiasm.

I LOVE Taron Egerton. My criticism is aimed at this abysmal unintentionally hilariousfilm.

Did YOU watch Robin Hood? What's the latest HILARIOUSLY bad movie you've seen? Drop a comment below!

*Spike Lee coined the Magical Negro trope/phrase in 2001. Jamie Foxx’s character has all three defining traits: Black, check. Oppressed, check. A ‘noble savage’, check. He solely exists to impart wisdom on and help the white, “English” character (aka Robin) on his heroic bandit journey!!! After “John”’s son dies in Arabia and he’s freed, he has nothing left to live for but to see Robin take down a corrupt Sheriff’s reign!!!!!! To add insult to injury he’s also a comedy bit in that his complicated “ethnic” name baffles the English and is meant to be knee-slapping funny! Cringe. Very cringe. (How the heck did Jamie Foxx get behind ANY that!?)

**And by “good” I meant absolutely TERRIBLE and the second worst movie I’ve seen on my Thanksgiving night cinema-going tradition. The worst was Frozen. Fight me on it. I dare you.

Photos from IMDB

Gifs from GIPHY