I've had a bit of a roller-coaster experience with watching Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. When I first watched the movie, sometime in the early '90s, I recall finding it reasonably entertaining. The next time I watched it, however, I absolutely hated it. In retrospect, I suspect that this reaction might have had something to do with watching it in a motel room in Texas... in the middle of the summer... with the air conditioning not working, because after watching it once again to review it, I'm back at the "reasonably entertaining" verdict. (For the curious, the air conditioning problem was solved and the rest of the vacation went fine.)

I'm not entirely sure what the overall tone of the film is intended to be. It's not uncommon for an otherwise highly dramatic story to have one character or situation that provides a touch of comic relief (just look at Shakespeare for plenty of examples), or to see comedies that are given a bit more bite by virtue of having some genuinely dramatic parts. Most of the time, though, the overall emphasis of the story is clear, with the touch of drama or comedy heightening the main effect.

In contrast, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves ends up being neither fish nor fowl: depending on what part of the film you happen to be watching at any given moment, you might conclude that it's either a complete slapstick parody, or a taking-itself-seriously historical epic. The film makes some effort in the general vicinity of historical realism, most notably with the setting, but it's pretty clear that this is not a primary concern of the film: the over-the-top villainy of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman), for one thing, precludes taking the film seriously as an accurate representation of the origins of the Robin Hood legend. The fact that Kevin Costner doesn't even try to do an English accent in the title role is really beside the point, anyway; is he really playing anybody except "Kevin Costner"? On balance, the best way to enjoy Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is to take it on the lighter side: if you expect a certain degree of silliness, the whole experience is much more entertaining.

One plot point that does draw effectively on real history, though it will most likely pass unnoticed by most viewers, is the Sheriff's use of Celtic mercenaries late in the film: while this itself is not necessarily based in real history (the rebellious nobility of King Richard's time caused plenty of trouble on their own, without any need to bring in foreigners), it nicely echoes the quasi-mythical story of King Vortigern who, hundreds of years earlier in a fragmented England called on two Saxon leaders to fight for him against rivals. As it happens, these warriors fought off Vortigern's enemies... but instead of taking their pay and going home, they decided to turn against Vortigern and carve out a kingdom of their own in England, paving the way for the Saxon invasion. Oops. While this isn't how things play out in the film, this tactic is exactly the kind of two-edged sword that the Sheriff of Nottingham would eagerly seize without considering how it might turn against him.

The one actor in the star-studded and generally adequate cast who really stands out is Morgan Freeman, who does an excellent job of portraying a believable Moor transplanted to "barbaric" England. One of the best scenes in the film is one in which he pulls out a telescope to check out riders on the horizon: Robin's reaction when he takes a look neatly captures the difference of the era between the highly civilized Arabic cultures and the scientifically backward English. It's a shame that the film didn't concentrate more on the historical realism and less on the cartoony material, because it could possibly have been a much more substantial movie than it actually turned out to be.

Okay, so Robin Hood is reasonably entertaining: light-weight, fluffy fun, a retelling of a classic legend with all the traditional trimmings like the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, the lovely Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), and of course Robin's band of "merry men," including the famous Friar Tuck and Little John. The one thing that really plays against it is simply that it's too long. The film is reasonably entertaining, but it doesn't have the backbone to stand up to the two-and-a-half-hour running time without sagging. While there's nothing that aggressively stands out as needing to be trimmed, my bet is that the film overall could have been tightened up considerably in the editing stage, trimming bits of flab here and there throughout the whole film.

With this in mind, the "extended" nature of the Special Edition is even more unnecessary. Sure, it's only twelve minutes, but adding twelve minutes to an already overlong film isn't quite what the doctor ordered. On the bright side, the new footage has been very well integrated into the film overall, with no scenes that stand out as blatantly unnecessary. The chapter listing on the inside flap of the DVD packaging very conveniently indicates which chapters contain new footage: five chapters out of 46 have new material, all of it toward the middle of the film, and mainly dealing with the Sheriff of Nottingham.

The DVD

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Extended Version is a two-disc set, packaged in a cardboard fold-up case that fits into a paperboard sleeve. While I'm not fond of Warner's packaging, and I'd prefer a plastic keepcase, the packaging isn't terrible, and the art is attractive. The first DVD is a dual-layer disc with the film, while the second disc contains the bonus materials.

Video

For a nicely presented special edition like this, I would have expected a better transfer than what we actually get. The bit rate of the film averages around 8 mb/s, which isn't bad, but it's also not up there with really solid transfers at 9 mb/s and up. Some scenes look good, such as daylight scenes in the outdoors, which helps to bring up the overall video score. Colors are also well handled throughout the film, looking fairly vibrant and natural. And to the film's favor, the widescreen 1.85:1 image is anamorphically enhanced.

A number of problems plague the image, however. Edge enhancement is very heavy, resulting in wide, bright haloes around objects that are especially noticeable in scenes that have a bright background. The grain in the film is also well above acceptable levels, with any dimly-lit or dark scene suffering considerably.

It's in the contrast that the transfer is weakest. Throughout the film, the contrast appears to have been set too high, with shadowed areas turning to full black very quickly, with a resulting loss of detail. No subtleties of shading are visible here: pretty much, an object is well lit or it's completely in the dark. This goes for darker portions of a well-lit scene as well as overall dark scenes, so the contrast is a constant issue.

All in all, the film is certainly watchable, and the good points of the transfer balance out the faults enough to let me give it a slightly above-average mark, but it still doesn't live up to expectations.

Audio

The sound quality here falls well short of even modest expectations. The DTS track, which I was eagerly looking forward to, is laughable. I counted exactly two occasions in which I heard distinct surround effects being used (one instance of birds, and another of water dripping) and in the latter instance, the same localization of the sound is used even when the camera rotates, putting the source of the sound on the other side of the screen. The music is reasonably spread across the different channels, but there's little sense that any attention was placed to balancing the different elements of the score rather than just sending it to all the speakers.

A Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is also included, for viewers without DTS decoders. As far as I could tell, it sounds exactly the same as the DTS track, for good and for bad; this isn't the DVD to make you go out and buy a new player with DTS capability.

I wouldn't downgrade the rating of the soundtrack so heavily if it just didn't live up to its potential; the problem is that the sound is not particularly well handled in its basic tasks. Dialogue is presented unevenly, with the volume shifting at different points during the film, and in many instances, the actors' voices are slightly muffled. This is certainly not one of the clearer soundtracks I've heard.

Extras

For fans of the film, there are several special features worth noting, though fewer for casual viewers. Of most merit are two full-length audio commentaries, found on the first disc of the set. The first commentary features actors Morgan Freeman and Christian Slater along with writer/producer Pen Densham and co-writer/producer John Watson. The second commentary has Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds.

The second DVD contains the balance of the special features. One feature likely to appeal to enthusiasts is a full isolated music score by Michael Kamen, in Dolby 5.1. The menu for this feature allows listeners to select the full film score, or hop to nine different scene-specific portions of the soundtrack.

The featurette section is a mixed bag, offering less substance than I had hoped for. First billing is given to "Robin Hood: The Man, the Myth, the Legend," which starts off with a rather pretentious introduction by Pierce Brosnan (why Pierce Brosnan? I have no idea) that suggests that the featurette will delve into the origins of the character of Robin Hood in history and legend. Alas, that promise is unfulfilled, as this 31-minute piece ends up being a mainly promotional-style piece with short segments looking behind the scenes, at the making of the music, and so on, liberally salted with clips from the film. Oddly enough, Brosnan's introduction mentions the feature as being an hour long... so what happened to the other 29 minutes? My theory is that it must have originally been shown on television... with commercials. Almost half commercials? Egads. This is why I watch things on DVD, not television...

A section of interviews titled "One on One with the Cast" offers twenty minutes of interview footage with Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Christian Slater, and Alan Rickman. I didn't find the interviews particularly compelling, but they may be of some interest. One convenient feature is a "play all" option.

Also in the featurettes section is a four-minute video of Bryan Adams playing "Everything I Do, I Do It for You" at Slade Castle.

The remaining special features are a typical miscellany of bonus material. In "Production Design" we get four sets of textual notes on various aspects of production. The "Publicity Gallery" includes the film's theatrical trailer and six TV spots, a set of six other Morgan Creek DVD releases, a cast and crew biography/filmography section, and a text section on five different weapons featured in the film. This section is also where the music-only score is accessed.

The menus are functional, but feature lengthy computer graphic animations in the transitions that get rather tedious after a while.

Final thoughts

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Extended Edition is a light-weight, mostly entertaining film that should please Costner fans and those viewers who don't mind the film's odd way of sometimes taking itself seriously and other times jumping into slapstick humor. Overall, I found it reasonably fun to watch, though rather overly long at more than two and a half hours. While the video and audio portions of the film are less than I'd have hoped for, it's watchable, and the special features do offer additional value. For existing fans of the film, I'll go ahead and give this a mild recommendation, while for those who are doubtful I'll suggest it as a good rental.