The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 133 Days to go: 92
Movie #307: Willow
After Top Gun, Willow was probably the first movie my family ever owned. We recorded it off either HBO or Showtime way back in the day when you had to use a VCR and a blank VHS tape. It was on the same tape as the Showtime comedy special we recorded off a free weekend, Steven Banks’ Home Entertainment Center (which you should totally watch, because it’s FUCKING AMAZING, it’s on YouTube in its entirety, and it will explain why I sometimes break into seemingly nonsensical songs about barbeques or Carly Simon’s thighs). This particular tape was a beloved one-two punch of entertainment, and I held onto it for years and years after I no longer had a VCR.
Willow is a great little fantasy flick. The main story revolves around the tried and true angle of a child born to fulfill a prophecy for saving the world and an evil queen trying to destroy it before it can destroy her. It’s got fairy tale elements, biblical elements (the midwife who smuggles the child to safety conveniently finds a ready-made bassinet of twigs on the river bank for her to send the baby off in), and it throws a noble quest in the mix as well. These are all familiar tropes of the genre, which makes it imperative to a successful film that the characters are strong, unique and compelling.
In the universe of Willow, there are three different humanoid species — Nelwyns are all little people (and are played all by little people actors in roles that don’t demean them or ask them to be cutesy munchkins or greedy goblins or anything like that), Daikinis are your standard full-size people (to which both the prophecized baby and the evil queen belong), and Brownies are tiny little fairy-sized people but without wings (think The Indian in the Cupboard or The Secret World of Arrietty or some such). Smartly, there is dissension among these races, making their quest all the more difficult.
The baby drifts along the river to the farm of Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis), a wannabe sorcerer who is pretty much the laughingstock of his village but who has a great loyal friend, an incredibly romantic, loving relationship with his wife, and the two most adorable children ever. The presence of a Daikini baby, however, would be met with skepticism and foreboding even if that baby wasn’t wanted by the evil Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh). So the high council decides Willow should return the baby to the Daikini crossroads. He does, with the help of a few villagers who accompany him, but when they come across Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) hanging in a Daikini prison cage, everyone wants to wash their Nelwyn hands of the problem, leaving Willow on his own. Madmartigan wants to get out of his prison, obviously, so he cajoles the Nelwyns into letting him out and eventually convinces Willow to hand over the care and keeping of the baby. (He doesn’t care about the baby, though, and quickly has it stolen from him by a couple of Brownies who I always thought, as a kid, were played by Lenny & Squiggy — which, let’s face it, would’ve been brilliant — but who were really just Kevin Pollak and some other guy (Rick Overton).) Willow chases after the Brownies to get the baby back but is captured by them and finds out about the prophecy and how important the baby is. He is sent on a quest to bring her to safety, and through a series of events he, with the Brownies as his guides and Madmartigan as his warrior protection, sets off.
Of course, they are being chased by Bavmorda’s guards at every turn, including her uber badass daughter Sorsha (Joanne Whalley). Sorsha is a great warrior herself, and she carries the scariest sword ever in existence. Yes, she gets thrown off course a bit by Madmartigan’s wooing words one night, but in her defense Val Kilmer was brutally hot back then (I even had a Madmartigan poster on my bedroom wall) and those two had some sizzling chemistry (no doubt the reason she was Joanne Whalley-Kilmer for a while after this movie came out). She doesn’t fully turn against her mother and join up with Madmartigan until she sees what an amazing swordsman and warrior he is, battling her entire army by himself. That’s worth being impressed over.
It’s a funny, sweet, spectacular thrill ride of a film (you really can’t go wrong with Kevin Pollak doing a silly accent) and it appeals to the young and the old. (I used to be young, and now I’m old, plus my stepdaughter watched it every day when she was seven or so.) It’s hard to come across a true family film like that these days. I’ve never gotten sick of it, and I’ve watched it A LOT. I would recommend it to anyone.
Viable Option 