Willow

Willow is above grade as eighties fantasy movies go. Inspired by the adventurism of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and not really owing much to Conan, (A movie often credited with spawning a hundred poor imitators) Willow recyles a few bits and pieces from producer Lucas' own works as well as LOTR. It stands above some of its contemporaries largely because of its good humour, budget, effects, and relatively good cast. We don't get James Carradine in underpants with a plastic sword in this movie or Ralph Bashiki inhaling the remaining budget up his nose and ending the movie 2/3 of the way through.

On the other hand, some wimpy writing and an overabundance of cliches and talking special effects of the variety Lucas will become damned for decades later; (French Canadian brownies/fairies, a sorceress trapped in animal form, Warwick Davis) fill up too much of a good movie.

Warwick Davis aka Willow is actually just 18 in this role, which proves that we can't tell how old dwarves are since we totally buy that he has two adolescents and is married. He wants to be a sorceror but lacks the ability to successfully make pigs disappear or convince an old beardo that he knows which finger is magic. The beardo holds out his hand and --yes, of course it's Willow's own finger --this is a riddle not The Price is Right! He'll figure that one out later though. I like the wizard, he seems less powerful than he is just clever. I'd imagine the movie could have used more of him.

Val Kilmer, (Known as Madmartigan; not Mad Martigan or Bad Cardigan) overacts a great deal which is unfortunate, but I think he still deserved a better romantic entanglement than he got. It's good that he doesn't steal the picture from Willow though. The movie also includes some incredibly annoying green screened little fairies with French Canadian accents who replace Willow's fellow villagers as his companions. I guess the real little people couldn't get bigger roles because they wouldn't work for sufficient scale.

Willow is given a wand by someone who is definately not the elf-queen from the Lord of the Rings. Willow by this point in the movie has both a very powerful magic wand as well as a bag of rocks that can actually turn things into stone. So it's funny in hindsight to realise that our star is carrying around so much deadly firepower as he runs from all confrontation and he and his friends face all sorts of peril he could easily have destroyed had he bothered to use what he was given.

The outline of the plot is that the evil sorceress queen needs to cast a spell on a baby princess that is destined to defeat her. Notably the baby does no such thing. Instead we get a catfight between 170 years of old ladies and Willow tricks the queen with a cheap magic prank. She throws a shit fit so severe she accidentally kills herself. It was one of the worst endings I've ever seen for a movie of this relatively high quality.

Except for the green screened fairies, the movie has great effects, a good set, pretty good actors --and the best is the star, Warwick Davis. The script isn't really bad either. I'm not sure if there were many good entries in this genre of movie until the last decade. (Conan, Excalibur,...?) Still I think it's fair to say that this movie got by in large due to good feelings, and genuine effort more than the merits of great spell weaving. I do enjoy the movie, but I think there may only be a few genuinely strong scenes, like the scenes at the castles toward the end. (Though I also found the castles seemed a little too lonely --they were more like forts)

I think this could have been a cooler movie with more of the not-hobbits and if the evil sorceress did more than send her minions out to do her work.