Willow 1988
I never knew much about this movie, but people were kind of excited that it was being released on blu-ray after Disney bought Lucasfilm. I was curious enough to watch it on Disney Plus. It is an amazing blend of really good and really awful. It is hard to believe that George Lucas came up with the story and Ron Howard directed this because at times it is incredibly amateurish. While it isn’t directly ripping off any particular fairy tale story, there isn’t much here that hasn’t been seen before in terms of the plot. It has some ambition in dealing with people of different sizes, from pocket sized brownies, to little people, to regular size. But the brownies always look green screened in. And one of the monsters in particular (a two-headed dragon) looks incredibly bad, like something from the 1960’s. There are a lot of shots of a baby who sometimes cries or laughs or just looks around. There are a lot of good ideas, but the execution is just really poor. I knew the reviews were not that good, so I wasn’t too hopeful, but still found it disappointing.
Written: 17 Sep 2021