It’s May of 2017, and we just got King Arthur: Legend of the Sword which was a revamping of a medieval tale read to kids before bedtime. It was a much more gritty version than the one Disney gave us back in the mid 20th century. Legend of the Sword was a terrible film with an extremely hard to follow plot and an incomprehensible third act, along with the worst villain of 2017. Robin Hood (2018) is a revamping of… yeah, you get the joke I’m making. However, Robin Hood surprisingly isn’t awful. Actually, it is somewhat fun. I was completely surprised after a lackluster marketing campaign, but let me get into what works and what doesn’t.

So there are two major things which work in the film: the intriguing action and the fantastic production design. The action uses a style of fast editing and provides lots of fun ways for Robin and his partners in crime to battle the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham. However, even the best action in the film pales in comparison to the exquisite production of Robin Hood. Everything from the impressive backdrops and lavish corridors to the costume design of the crusaders and Robin’s hood are superb. The acting is also fairly good, mainly from Jamie Foxx as Little John, who, while a mentor stereotype is still an interesting character.

Rotten Tomatoes: 18%                                                         IMDB: 6.9/10

IGN: 4.5/10                                                                            My Score: 5/10

On that note, let me talk about what really didn’t work, and aside from Ben Mendelsohn’s performance which is so hammy you could put it on the table at Christmas, there is one thing that is truly awful, and that is the extremely generic storytelling. While I was watching, I was thinking to myself “Okay, and now this is going to happen” and then it would happen. Now, that happening once or twice isn’t too bad, heck, I’ve seen over 130 movies this year, if a movie doesn’t repeat a cliche I’d be amazed, but the fact that I could do this during the entire 116 minute runtime of the film is simply astounding. It’s nearly every “swashbuckling tale rolled into one. They pretty much combined The Three Musketeers (2011), Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) into one big blob of indistinguishable action. You could show me a screenshot of most of these action scenes and if you blurred out the faces, I couldn’t tell you which of those three movies it would belong to. It’s incredibly generic.

Those are my thoughts Robin Hood (2018), and very simply, I’ve seen worse. If you’re looking for a fun dumb time, I’d recommend it. It has enough cool action scenes and impressive visuals to waste a few hours in a fun way. However, if you want something like the original Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), I’d recommend looking elsewhere.