WILLOW (1988)

WILLOW (1988)

Tagline : Forget all you know, or think you know.

(Adventure, Action, Drama) [PG] 

WILLOW is actually kind of “STAR WARS-ish” when you boil it down. It was also actually meant to be more than just a single film with follow up movies, but it didn’t make quite enough for all that mumbo jumbo so writer George Lucas did follow up books instead. The books were called “The Chronicles Of The Shadow War” and were named “Shadow Moon”, “Shadow Dawn” and “Shadow Star”. Lame. With a rad collective title like that… couldn’t those single books have been more interesting? 

Anyway, in this one we get a Moses type character only, it’s a girl and she’s going to end up being a queen if she isn’t killed by the evil Queen Bavmorda. The baby is found literally in a stream by the children of Willow Ufgood (played by Warwick Davis). Willow is a bit of a magician but wants to be a wizard. After a series of events, it is decided that Willow needs to take care of this baby and keep it from being killed. Along the way, he joins forces with Madmartigan who is a swordsman (played by Val Kilmer), a sorceress Fin Raziel (played by Patricia Hayes), and little rowdy dudes known as “Brownies”, named Franjean and Rool. Bavmorda's daughter Sorsha (played by Joanee Whalley), and this Skeletor wannabe commander named General Kael (played by Pat Roach best known as the big Nazi dude that Indy fights in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) are also kind of rivals looking for the baby, so be on the look-out for that, because Bavmorda is serious…she cannot have this baby out walking around laughing and giggling and stuff. 

First off I want to say there are some really damn slow parts in this movie. Especially the part where Willow first meets Madmartigan. I could have gone and watched another movie and came back and Madmartigan would still be in that cage Willow found him in. What this movie does do nicely is keep moving once it’s gets going. There are some great action sequences and the humor and acting hold this thing up extremely well. Even if I didn’t know that Warwick Davis was only 17 when he shot this movie, I still would have been blown away by his presence as an actor. Kilmer (who is still acting to this day is great in the role of Madmartigan and I also really enjoyed his chemistry with Sorsha. 

Like I said earlier, if you look at this thing it’s got all the underlying elements of STAR WARS aside from the family entanglements only it’s set in a world that is also very LORD OF THE RINGS. In fact, before LORD OF THE RINGS Peter Jackson style came out, WILLOW was the LORD OF THE RINGS of its day cinematically speaking. To keep this review short, I won’t go into all if it, but if you look at Bavmorda, you can’t tell me she wouldn’t be a great wife for the Emperor in the STAR WARS saga. You also can’t say that General Kael isn’t a Darth Vader type without the force, and so on.

We get crazy rat dogs, giant two-headed creatures that spring from the blood of trolls, dudes turning into pigs! What else could you want in a movie? WILLOW isn’t perfect, but it’s fun and for those reasons, I have to bump this thing up to a 6 out of 7. I honestly went into watching this last week thinking it was going to end up a 4 out of 7 from what I remembered. I am actually fonder of it now than I was when it came out.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF LUCASFILM AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.  

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