Here we are in the closing days of November and Christmas is only a month away. So for an early Christmas present I’m going to bash a modern blockbuster because it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so sit back and relax and enjoy the show.

The Tale of Ser Robin: After that excellent movie I saw yesterday, I felt like I have been taking it very easy recently so I decided to see that new Robin Hood movie and it’s a complete mess. From the trailer it looked kind of terrible like most modern movies, but it’s much much worse than I anticipated.

So the trailer for this movie shows a young Robin (in this movie his last name isn’t Hood but his vigilante name) being trained by Jaime Foxx. Robin and Jaime Foxx are instant badasses as they take on the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin himself is your typical modern charming jokey male protagonist and he lives in a cleaner and more architecturally advanced version of Nottingham, including giant flaming exhaust vents and nice fancy streetscapes.  It simply doesn’t look like anything that you would expect to find in the 13th century.  From what I remember in the trailer it’s presented as very lighthearted and fun, Robin flips around the place shooting arrows and all of that, he gets to make-out with the girl of the movie, the civilians revolt against the Sheriff and Jaime Foxx says ‘You’re no longer Robin of whatever but a Robin Hood’. What I just described sounds like an okay popcorn flick? But it’s all a lie!!

What’s the Plot of This Stupid Movie: The movie itself  is not very fun or lighthearted but it’s actually very serious, dark, gritty,  violent (to a certain extent) and it’s a tale of Robin Hood as you have never seen him before. (That’s how it’s narrated.) Robin of whatever is some handsome guy who falls in love with a thief who tries to steal a horse for some reason. Then they start slobbering over each other for a bit and then he’s kicked out of his home and is send to fight in Iraq. This is where the story starts to fall apart because it’s never really explained why they’re fighting these people besides they’re black and we need a way to bring Jaime Foxx into our movie filled with white people. This is where the violence comes into play because this is rated Mature and the only way people die are shots to the chest. But this movie is another implied violence type movie and I don’t understand why it wasn’t jumped up a rating because of how dark and violent it is. Jaime Foxx gets his hand cut off, but don’t worry he loses no blood and he gets over it like right away. Jaime Foxx’s son is beheaded which should be an emotional scene but again it’s shown off screen and the writing is so bad that this moment will not be relevant again for the rest of the movie.

After that, Robin of whatever gets shot by his superior officers for helping Jaime Foxx. You’d think he would die here but you see he’s wearing armour so that means he’s fine. I know there are other people in this movie that are wearing armour and one arrow to the chest means they’re done, but you see they don’t have plot armour like Robin, so that means their armour is as useless as the ones the Stormtroopers wear. So once Robin of whatever comes home this is the part that really confused me and I’m going to do my best here to explain it. So according to the people of Nottingham, Robin of whatever died in battle, but the thing is he came back along with everyone else, alive and well, but they still think he died in battle. Also it’s been like 2 years since he left (I think) and the girl has moved on with someone else. I’m not sure if I missed a scene or not but if I didn’t then this makes zero sense.

This is where he runs into Jaime Foxx again and we get our first bit of forced comedy. Why I say forced is that after they wrote the script, the execs told the director it’s not funny enough so the director just inserts some random comedy for the hell of it. Not because it fits the scene or the tone but because it’s RANDOM AND LOL!!! So the joke is Jaime Foxx’s name is Yahya but since that name is too foreign and no one in the audience would be able to pronounce it, his name can translate to John. AREN’T WE FUNNY!!!!!!!!!! From here John trains Robin to become a super badass bow guy even though we never see John with a bow. John gets a stump to cover up how lazy the VFX team is and Robin stalks his ex a couple of times throughout the film and for now on I’m going to dub him Stalker Hood.

Why Are They Acting This Way: This part of the movie is where the character motivations become very clear. John’s motivation is to get revenge on the guy who killed his son and his goal of accomplishing that is to train some random kid he met once to be a vigilante and to steal from the government and somehow that’ll bring out the guy he wants to kill. Robin Stalker just wants to bang his ex-girlfriend again. Everything he does in this movie is to please her. The reason why he decides to give his earnings to the poor is because he overhears the girl talking to her boyfriend about wanting “the hood” to help the needy. I’m not a big Robin Hood fan but I would be pretty annoyed, if I was a fan, that Robin Hood’s true motivation is simply to please the girl he hasn’t seen in two years so that he can finally get laid. Speaking of the girl, she is cursed with lazy strong female character traits. ‘I’m a good person who looks out for the common people because they’re not perfect like me. But the only time I’m useless is when I need a man to save my perfect ass.’ I know that may have sounded a bit offensive but that’s just how she’s written.  She’s a generic damsel in distress and she also has to be a strong female character because this was written by 50 year old men who probably haven’t been around any women in awhile.

Let’s get to the villain who is kind of just thrown in there and made the main antagonist. We can’t have those evil soldier guys, we need Robin Hood’s arch nemesis. I feel kind of bad for the actor who is basically typecast as the pathetic evil guy and his latest role is no exception. His plan is to raise the peasants’ taxes so he can give it to the church in order to gain more power or something and everyone wants him dead for some reason. From what I remember in the Disney animated version, The Sheriff of Nottingham is just the bumbling henchman for the main villain, Prince John, who just raises everyone’s taxes because he’s greedy and selfish. In this movie Prince John doesn’t exist and the Sheriff is really just doing his job like the animated version, while also being a bit ruthless. The same goes with the soldier guys at the beginning. So the reason why these guys are ruining the main characters lives is mostly because  Robin Stalker and the gang are the cause of their own problems.

Unintentional Comedy/Bad Action: So this serious darkly comedic movie is littered with action scenes. Because you know what the original Robin Hood was missing: Robin Hood going on ridiculous killing sprees, pulling off law defying stunts and slow-mo. I think he only robbed and gave to the innocent once in the whole movie. As for the action, again I wish the rating was higher so we can see it and I would appreciate some blood too. Also the action scenes involve alot of slow-mos and the editing feels so choppy that you can barely tell what’s happening.

Probably the best example in the movie is the cart chase where it’s hard to tell what’s happening. It also has Robin and John stop the Sheriff’s men from killing the civilians. But that damn woman is there too, so they save her and they completely forget to save the common people. This isn’t the only time they mess up, like with the plan to rob the Sheriff’s vault. But since Stalker Hood sucks at being a thief he completely forgets about  robbing the vault and instead just kills a bunch of nameless guards. What makes this even more confusing is Jaime Foxx congratulates Robin for getting The Sheriff’s attention, like it was their plan all along and not to rob his freaking vault!!

I could go on but I want to end this with some scenes I liked for reasons the writers of this movie didn’t intend. During the cart chase scene the girl character figures out Robin Stalker’s identity and he rightfully asks ‘Hey, how did you know that?’ Then she says ‘That’s because your costume looks terrible and because I’m completely different to everyone else in this town.’ I find this very funny because that’s exactly how I viewed her character for the whole movie. The other one is during the final action scene in this movie after they drop the wagon of money into the ground our two leads are in danger so they decide to make out. But the funny part is the girl’s boyfriend sees this and this is all in slow motion by the way. The guy drops his Molotov cocktail and he catches on fire and the tunnel collapses and I was trying to contain my laughter, it was so dumb that it’s amazing.

So in the end Jaime Foxx gets his revenge on the guy that didn’t do anything to him but he’s happy so who cares. Robin Stalker and everyone in the town move into the woods and the fire guy becomes the new Sheriff of Nottingham and apparently Nottingham is not in ruins because they are still tons of people. (You guys somehow messed up your rebel plans again!) It ends on a cliffhanger because this movie is so confident that it will get a sequel which will be funny to laugh at in a few years’ time.

To Not Be Continued: This movie reminded me of The Lone Ranger movie which also bombed and no one liked. But with that movie it has one serious scene and that’s to set up the hero’s motivation. Other than that it’s stupidly fun. I could watch that movie multiple times and have a pretty good time. Robin Hood doesn’t know what it wants to be. (Besides raking it in at the Box-Office.) I know some of you probably don’t care if the tone is inconsistent, but it seriously is very important to set up what type of tone you’re going for. If you don’t then your audience won’t know how they should be reacting to certain scenes. I’ll use two movies as examples, one being Monty Python and the Holy Grail as it’s something that is impossible to take seriously and Logan which is a depressing survival story. (I guess spoilers for these movies.) So in the Holy Grail when King Arthur and his knights come across a killer white fluffy rabbit guarding a cave, what if right here out of nowhere it suddenly took a very dark turn and now the movie wants you to take it extremely seriously? Or in Logan after Professor X is killed by the clone Wolverine what if Wolvie decided to be super silly and he and his pals just started cracking jokes?

I think I’ve made my point. Along with Robin Hood’s story being very confusing and littered with plot holes, character arcs being quickly abandoned when convenient, bad performances, camera work and editing, the comedy is forced and the only times it is funny is when it’s not appropriate. What a disaster!  So here you go, it’s a 1/10 and it earns the Official Blog Complainer Epic Fail Seal. This type of award goes to pieces of media that completely fail at being good products while also failing at being a proper film.

As recommendations go I would say don’t bother, especially if you’re a child or a teen because the trailers outright lie to you and I reckon you would have a very boring experience. As for everyone else, I would wait until it’s on Netflix, it’s not worth your hard earned money.

That’s it for another review, if you enjoyed yourself then stick around and we can discuss together in the comments. I’ll be back later next week with this months Netflix Watchathon and then more movies again for Christmas. Yay!

Til Next Time, Blog Complainer, Out.