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| Title: WILLOW Year: 1988 Rating: *** |
There a point in the George Lucas production WILLOW directed by Ron Howard, a cross between STAR WARS and THE LORD OF THE RINGS, when Val Kilmer's ragged heart-of-gold scoundrel Madmartigan is battling an antagonist at the back of a horse-drawn carriage, and Lucas's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK also comes to mind...
Overall paced more like a rugged Western than Magical Fantasy, Ron Howard seems more at home with fast-paced action than thrusting the viewer into another world where, like in STAR WARS, an important someone has to be rescued by a naive farmer... in this case the titular WILLOW played by former Ewok Warwick Davis, who goes on the initial foot journey to protect an infant that will overthrow a vicious sorcerer-queen...
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Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis in WILLOW
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Played with formidable menace by British actress Jean Marsh, she has a beautifully cunning daughter in Joanne Whalley's Sorsha, kind of a villain until falling much too quickly for the initially locked-up criminal Kilmer (both would famously marry in real life)...
Soon she too joins what's basically a "cross country" series of ragged underdog misfits battling close-calls throughout various villages: until reaching the big dark castle to rescue the princess... oops, wrong movie... the baby...
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| Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley in WILLOW |
At which point, along with director Howard's HAPPY DAYS brother Gavan O'Herlihy as a valiant knight, WILLOW has some good moments despite two tiny characters so unrealistically superimposed they seem from another movie...
Other than the one where an energetically primal Kilmer, working extra hard inwardly and outwardly to escape from his usual stalwart handsomeness, makes for a unique anti-hero who could have had his very own traipsing adventure (with Willow as his sidekick instead of the other way around), and without the distractions: too many for this pretty good feature to reach the almost great status that Kilmer (and Warwick Davis) deserved.
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| Val Kilmer in WILLOW |
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| Warwick Davis in WILLOW |
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| Val Kilmer in WILLOW |
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| Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis in WILLOW |
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| Kevin Pollock and Rick Overton in WILLOW |
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| Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis in WILLOW |
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| Val Kilmer in WILLOW |
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| Joanne Whalley in WILLOW |
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| Val Kilmer in WILLOW |
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| Val Kilmer in WILLOW |
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| Gavan O'Herlihy in WILLOW |
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| Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley in WILLOW |
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