Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) - film review

Robin of Loxley discovers that the Crusades aren’t quite what they are cracked up to be when he ends up chained to a prison wall in a less salubrious quarter of downtown Jerusalem.  Still, with a little help from his cellmate Asneeze, he manages to escape, free all his fellow prisoners and swim all the way back to England without having to put in a claim on his travel insurance.  He arrives back home in time to see his castle towed away for non-payment of taxes and meets up with Asneeze’s son, Ahchoo. The latter gives Robin some news that chills his blood and raises his hackles like they have never been raised before.  With King Richard still playing the Great Crusader, his brother John has usurped the throne and is even now tyrannising the God-fearing folk of England, with the help of his villainous sidekick, the Sheriff of Rottingham.  To free his people from the tyrant’s yoke, and hopefully have some fun along the way, Robin assembles a band of merry men which comprises his loyal blind servant Blinkin, the bolshy tollkeeper Little John, demon knife thrower Will Scarlet O’Hara, and several other alpha males who happen to like wearing green tights.  Realising the threat that Robin poses, King John devises a cunning plan to have him disposed of.  He organises an archery contest which he knows his nemesis will be unable to resist and hires hitman Don Giovanni to assassinate him during the tournament.  Unfortunately, he has not reckoned on Robin’s resourcefulness and ability to remember what is in the script.  Men in green tights are more dangerous than they look...

If only Mel Brooks and his team of writers could fire comedy missiles with the same unfaltering élan and precision as the folk hero Robin Hood fires his arrows.  Alas, whilst Brooks’ send up of the classic Robin Hood film offers some moments of blinding hilarity, far too many of the gags miss their mark and you can’t help feeling that too much effort was expended firing duds.  The film is at least partly redeemed by its unabashed political incorrectness, with just about every minority group you can imagine (including gays, Jews, blacks, fat women and Marlon Brando) all getting a fair ribbing in the name of entertainment.

The haphazard mix of juvenile screwball comedy and adult humour (chastity belt gags for instance) is problematic, since the film is unsuitable for children and too silly for most adults.  The real difficulty however is that all Robin Hood films inevitably have an element of self-parody – how could they not with the hero clad in snug green tights? – so the degree of comic separation between a spoof and the original is minimal.  You only have to watch Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) to see the truth of this.

Not the most successful of Mel Brooks’ spoofs then, and certainly not in the league of his earlier Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, but Robin Hood: Men in Tights still manages to be a moderately enjoyable romp.  In any event, it is far more entertaining than the overblown Kevin Costner film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which it shamelessly (yet justifiably) lampoons.  Say what you like about this film but at least the title character is played by an English man – albeit one who appears to have walked straight out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel...

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