Willow

"I'd say two or three hundred horses, five or six wagons... and about a thousand fools. "

Whatever, this film is way too long and basically steals its ideas from other fantasy books. Something significant must be taken somewhere (sound familiar?), the one to take it there is the smallest person in the group (catching on?) and a bunch of ...(read more)people dressed in black ride horses and whose sole goal is to hunt that one thing down (We're talking about Willow here, not Lord of the Rings). The whole baby escaping by the hands of an elderly person because of some crazed prophecy is basically ripped straight out of Prince Caspian.

So-So SFX (even for 1988 they could have been better) this film is rated PG, but the scene where the troll melts into a blob and grows and starts eating people is a little outside of what a PG movie should be. Still, for once I didn't hate Val Kilmer, and Warwick Davis was kinda charming...

Directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind), and produced by George Lucas (you can tell by all the Star Warsesque crazy wipes that separate the scenes), the film was intended to have several sequels that followed after the events of Willow, but due to its poor box-office receipts these were only made into books.

The story starts off like Prince Caspian quickly morphs into the story of Moses, and soon thereafter you are looking at the plot of the Lord of the Rings. Along the way Willow meets a master swordsman, Madmartigan (Kilmer), a pair of brownies (small people... played by Kevin Pollack and Rick Overton) and an enchanted animal Raziel (Patricia Hayes). Other randomness ensues such as: an evil queen's daughter falls for Madmartigan, an army is turned to pigs, a fairy god (Galadriel? is that you?) shelters the fellowship....err...gang, and Willow takes a sleigh ride down and off a mountain.

As you can tell I didn't really like this movie, but not because of the performances, but because of the ripoff storyline. You can like this movie all you want, but when it comes to 80's fantasy movies, Labyrinth is wayyyyy better.

*****
5 out of 10 Stars