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i loved willow as a kid. i would have been about 14 when it came out and i honestly enjoyed it. i played the willow game for nintindo over and over again (it was sort've like early zelda but better). i had seen parts of the movie again but never sat through the whole thing until now. after all these years its still enjoyable...if, of course, a bit dated.
the story, apparently written by lucas, begins as a baby noah story and quickly turns to blatant lord of the rings rip off. lucas of course has none of the skills that tolkien mastered in storytelling and 'world building'. lucas instead gives us the hollywood version of that. nothing bad but it does then reek of the time it was created...in this case the 80's.
its not unlike his ewok stories either...which will turn some people away from this quickly. in fact warwick davis was in both the ewok adventures, some of the other star wars films as well as this film.
willow is the story about a race of hobbits....oops nelwyns....that find a ring...i mean baby girl....and then have to set out on a long adventure to set things right. an evil force seeks the girl to destroy her. prophecy says she'll unseat the queen and so the evil force/queen...a sorcerer...wants her dead. standard fantasy fare. the nelwyn scenes are up there with the wizzard of oz for the sheer number of little people that are part of this film. there's no trickery resizing ala lord of the rings. and as far as i can see, the film is very respectful to them as people. they are in all respects a race here, nothing different than any other. along the way willow, the nelwyn that finds the baby and is charged with taking her to tir asleen, meets a bundle of characters. primarily madmartigan (val kilmer) and two brownies who add some comic flare to the movie as well as the 'good witch' fin raziel whom they need to defeat the queen.
all in all pretty predictable adventure...but also pretty entertaining.
filming wise its fairly cheesy fluff. overdone fantasy with some unfortunate attempts at special effects. any blue screen stuff is blatantly obvious to the point of nearly falling into laughable territory. the worse is the first overlay which is suppose to be this big monumental fairy godmother telling willow he's been 'choosen'. its frankly silly. the trolls in another bluescreen rendering are way off in tone but somehow this isn't so much an error as it is just noticable detail. (ie horribly bad but points out the 'otherworldly' of the beasts). not half as bad as the trolls themselves...which are more of a uglier harry and the hendersons.
this film has always received mixed reviews but for me it does a fine job and i still enjoy it. i'd still watch this any day over 90% of what hollywood puts out.
7/10
