Robin Hood: Men in Tights Movie Review

Mediocre parody movies are Newton’s second law as applied to cinema. For every hit over-the-top drama that paints characters by numbers there’s at least one end to end parody that makes the cookie cutters look like Central Park caricatures.

So for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, we have Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Kevin Costner’s Hood is aped by Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman’s Azeem has turned in Dave Chappelle’s Ahchoo. And Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's ice queen Maid Marion is replaced with Amy Yasbeck's mild, cute, and chaste dolt.

It is true, the legend had it coming, but this bad?

Robin Hood: Men In Tights is a pretty solid send up. It tosses out trademark Mel Brooks one and two liners. It gives a memorable and funny alter ego for even the smallest character in Prince of Thieves and echoes the original scene-for-scene 75 percent of the time.

And it’s the 25 percent where Mel Brooks tries to get creative where it starts to go bad. Trust me, Men in Tights did not need to have a title track musical number. Too many of the jokes that Men in Tights makes that aren’t directly skewering the original movie don’t really work.

Even when it delivers, it’s still so cheesy it could make the French lactose intolerant. The lines will make you laugh, but they wouldn’t work without the quality delivery of the cast. Chapelle shows the promise he lived up to in later years. Elwes digs enough of The Princess Bride out of his closet to keep Robin Hood entertaining. Mark Blankfield is borderline brilliant as the blind Blinkin. Tracey Ullman is wonderfully vile as Latrine, Prince John’s witch.

Richard Lewis’ Prince John complains annoyingly and too often, hitting us over the head a little too hard with the ineptitude and annoyance of the character. Amy Yasbeck plays the kind of uncharming, unfunny, and bimbo-like Maid Marion that only a Myspace virgin would want to rescue.

Despite these flaws, Robin Hood: Men in Tights is solid brainless entertainment. At the end of the day it holds it par with any other send up (and a number of other Mel Brooks films). Blazing Saddles it ain’t, but it’s as good of a waste of time as any.