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Running just under two-and-a-half hours, or in the case of the extended edition. I'm not asking for all that much uniqueness within the telling of this tale that you probably can't deliver in an original fashion (For goodness' sake, they've already interpreted this story with cartoon animals), but this films tells this classic tale in too conventional of a fashion, and takes longer than it should to do so. The film isn't necessarily frustratingly generic enough to be all-out trite, but it is so conventional that it doesn't stray away from trite as much as it probably should, frequently and rather cheesily collapsing into trope after trope, until, before you know it, predictability that is firmly established enough by this story's being so well-known finds itself pumped to the umpth degree.
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Lengthy though it may be, this film is still a commercial adventure fluff piece, and therefore cannot afford to slow down too much, which would be just fine if the constant momentum of this film's structure didn't come at the expense of expository depth, for although you get an adequate understanding of the characters and their story, there are still many glaring lapses in development that distance you a bit from this story, not matter how familiar it is, not necessarily as a recognized legend that has been celebrated time and again throughout the age, but as a formulaic effort. Still, its reviews were decent, and justly so, as this film is a reasonably fun one, and yet, believe it or not Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do it For You" is hardly it's biggest problem. I hope they enjoyed it, because "Waterworld" certainly flopped like a fish upon it's release, especially compared to this film, even when it comes to critical success, and this film was by no means a runaway critical hit. Man, first it was this film, then it was "The Three Musketeers", so Adams really was getting into ticking historians and, well, people with a basic understanding of what makes music good off in the early 1990s (I have to emphasize that, because as this film's soundtrack will tell you, you can't always trust that people are going to fully understand timelines), but hey, I doubt Costner and Kevin Reynolds were complaining back in 1991, because they got their money. Granted, Adams is Canadian, but the point is that this film spent money the old-fashioned American way, by bloating itself into a huge medium for commercial entertainment, even if such pieces of entertainment didn't even come close to fitting a swashbuckling adventure film set in the Middle Ages. Eh, maybe the game would be in session, for although Rickman is about as British as it gets, you're bound to forget that there's anyone who's not American in this film, seeing as how this project, in all of its unsubtle and financially overblown glory, is just so blasted 'Merican that it featured a hit song by Bryan Adams. They couldn't possibly be competing to see who does the best English accent, because Costner is facing enough of an overwhelming challenge in a contest with Morgan Freeman to see who has the most distinctive voice, and plus, even though he shouldn't technically count, seeing as how he is actually English, Rickman's accent is so darn English that any English accent-off within a perimeter occupied him is automatically cancelled out. It's Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Alan Rickman and, in a cameo appearance, Sean Connery ostensibly in some kind of a contest to see who has the most distinctive voice.