Willow
by Roger Ebert
A producer and a pharaoh find a baby on a raft in the Nile. "What
an ugly kid," the pharaoh says. "That's funny," says the producer. "He
looked great in the rushes."
- Old movie joke
"Willow" is a fearsomely ambitious movie, but it is not fearsome,
and it is not wondrous, and it is about a journey too far down a road
too well-traveled by other movies. It's a fantasy about the quest of a
lovable little person and his heroic newfound friend to return a lost
baby to where she belongs and to outsmart a wicked queen and kill a
two-headed dragon in the process. In other words, standard stuff.
What was supposed to make "Willow" special was the quality of the
production. This is a sword-and-sorcery epic produced by George Lucas,
whose "Star Wars" portrayed the same kind of material in outer space,
and directed by Ron Howard, whose human touch made "Cocoon" one of the
best recent science-fiction movies. The special effects are by Lucas's
company, Industrial Light and Magic, which has set the standard in such
matters. The budget was umpteen million dollars, and Hollywood has been
hoping that the Force was definitely with this film.
Alas, even the largest budgets and the most meticulous special
effects are only dead weight unless they have a story to make them
move. And at the story level, "Willow" is turgid and relentlessly
predictable. Not much really happens, and when it does, its pace is
slowed by special effects set pieces that run on too long and seem to
be recycled out of earlier movies.
The story: Willow, citizen of the Nelwyns, a race of little
people, is chosen by his community to take a baby to a far-off
crossroads where she can be found by her people, the Daikinis. The baby
was carried to Willow's land on a crude raft that was swept along by
river waters, but what Willow does not know is that the baby was placed
on the raft by her desperate mother. That was to save her from a decree
of death dealt out to all girl children by Bavmorda, the vicious queen
and sorcerer, who fears her successor has been born. So already we have
the story of Moses, cross-pollinated with "Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs." Lucas has a reputation as a student of old legends and
folklore, but there is a thin line between that and simply being a
student of old movies.
One of the crucial problems in "Willow" is that we see so much
of this baby. She is dragged from one end of the known world to the
other, usually with a plucky smile on her face. And whenever something
interesting happens, we get an appropriate reaction shot from the baby.
Hey, I like kids, but even Baby Leroy couldn't have saved this
character.
Willow (Warwick Davis) sets off with the baby in arms, and at the
crossroads he meets Madmartigan (Val Kilmer), a warrior who has been
imprisoned in a cage. Madmartigan convinces Willow to free him, using
much too much dialogue in the process, and then they team up to
continue their quest, which leads eventually to Bavmorda's fortress,
guarded by a two-headed, fire-breathing dragon.
So, OK, the dragon is well done. All of the special effects are
competent, but they do not breathe with the fire of life because they
are not motivated by a strong story we really care about. The
characters in "Willow" are shallow and unexciting, and the story is a
plod through recycled legend. Therefore even the battle with the dragon
is a foregone conclusion. There can be no true suspense in a movie
where even the characters seem to be inspired by other movies.
"Willow" is certainly not a breakthrough film to a mass
audience, but is it at least a successful children's picture? I dunno.
Its pacing is too deliberate, and it doesn't have a light heart. That's
revealed in the handling of some characters named the Brownies,
represented by a couple of men who are about 9 inches tall and fight
all the time. Maybe Lucas thought these guys would work like R2-D2 and
C-3PO did in "Star Wars." But they have no depth, no personalities, no
dimension; they're simply an irritant at the edge of the frame. Touches
like that will only confuse kids who know that good dreams do not have
to be clever, or consistent, or expensive, but that they should never,
ever, make you want to wake up.
Ebert, Roger. "Willow." *The Chicago Sun-Times*. (20 May 1988): n. pag.
Online. Internet. 4 Sept. 1997.
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