Review of Legend (1985) by Chelsie I — 18 Sep 2011

'Legend' proves that Ridley Scott is about as hit and miss as they come.

I rented this film thinking that I was getting a fun, possibly darkly comedic tale about an '80s businessman or something played by Tom Cruise, who'd be pulled down to Hell for whatever reason to face off with Tim Curry. I'm not sure why I thought this, but the film itself was not only dissapointingly different, but it was flat-out fucking terrible.

It's a load of 'Lord of the Rings'-esque high-fantasy bullshit about good and evil magic and light and darkness and blah blah blabberty blah. Now, I'm no fan of 'Lord of the Rings', but at least that film looked gorgeous and the special effects were realistic enough to take things seriously.

This film looks like 'Labyrinth'. It has the tone of a Jim Henson creation, but it's absolutely, 100% serious. Not even a hint of humour.

I can't take shitty puppets seriously in a film that takes itself seriously.

Not to mention all the awful, awful "nuke the fridge" moments such as when Mia Sara breaks into song after seeing a unicorn. This film isn't a musical, I should add. She just breaks into song ala a Disney princess and that's it. The film is full of bullshit moments like that. Hell, it's pretty much comprised entirely of them.

The only good thing I can say is that Tim Curry is brilliant (as usual) and his makeup is wonderful, terrifying, unique and totally badass. Every scene with him in is rendered watchable purely by his presence (although it irks me that the Devil has a british accent when most of the characters who live in the same place have American accents - what's that about?) but he's only in something like 8 minutes of the film's entire running time.

So yeah. This film is shit. If you have to see a Ridley Scott film with unicorns in it, watch 'Blade Runner'.

2/10.