Fantasy Flix: Beyond Sherwood Forest (2009)

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Beyond Sherwood Forest (2009)

England 1174: King Richard is away fighting the Crusade, his brother Prince John has been left in charge. In order to further international diplomatic relations with Austria, the beautiful young Maid Marian is to be married off to a prince. A cursed girl who can change into a ferocious dragon is used to find and pacify Robin Hood.

Here we have another fantasy flick for Syfy. Now, I'm generally easily impressed when it comes to my fantasy films. All you really have to do is not bore me to death. To that, I give this film a big ehh..

I really am torn here. I really want to like this movie for many reasons. First, it's a Robin Hood tale, and I love me some Robin Hood. Second, it's directed by Peter DeLuise, who is responsible for most of my beloved Stargate SG-1. Third, It's got alot of faces that I recognize... Robin Dunne (Sanctuary), Erica Durance (Smallville), Julian Sands (Lots of shit), Mark Gibbon (Smallville and Stargate), Bill Dow (Stargate) etc.

So, the question is, can these faces make up for the lackluster story and unfortunately the answer is no. Actually, the story isn't so bad. I think it's just poorly executed. I can't entirely blame Peter DeLuise, I think he just didn't have enough to work with. I believe the whole thing was shot in just a few weeks.

The action isn't horrible, what IS horrible is the action with the dragon on the green screen. The "dragon" doesn't look half bad, but the interaction with it with the cast is terrible.

The cast, as I said, isn't horrible either. (The British accents are horrible, but the cast isn't) I am not a big fan of Eric Durance, but she's not bad here, just boring.

Overall the story isn't bad, the acting isn't bad, the effects aren't bad, the action isn't bad, but somehow the movie is... well... kinda bad. It's really hard to put a finger on. Give it a try and see what you think.