Willow (1988)

We're sticking with the fantasy genre this week and reviewing Willow, or, as I like to call it, George Lucas presents Lord of the Rings.

C'mon. This movie is a complete rip. Not only does it steal the basic premise of LotR and replace the ring with a baby, but there are also ideas stolen from Gulliver's Travels and The Odyssey. The funny thing is that if you watch the special features, there's a featurette that starts off as follows: In a world full of sequels and movies with numbers behind their titles comes Willow, a completely original adventure. Sure, George, keep telling yourself that.

It's really not a bad movie, but it's far from being great. Val Kilmer is really the only human main character. Everyone else is a fucking midge or a midgier midge or a goat or something.

The best part of the movie is that the entire two hours is filled with racial slurs and hate crimes. Everyone calls Willow "Peck," which I'm pretty sure is a midge version of "Nigger." Everyone's like, "Move, Peck," "Out of the way, Peck." Then they'll push him over. It's pretty funny. Apparently the Elwyn are the Mexicans of this fantasy world.

Speaking of midges, George Lucas must be a god to those people...and not just because he towers over them. Lucas put more midges to work in the 80's than any circus, carnival, or freak show. If you thought the Ewok village put Midges to work, you ain't seen nothing yet! There's an entire Midge society in this movie! Hundreds of legit midges in a midge village built to scale. Maybe Tim Burton should have watched this movie before he hired a single Oompa Loompa and cloned him a million times for his crapfest Charlie remake. Fuck you, Burton. Fuck you and your shitty remakes.

Back to Willow, there's your typical fantasy elements here. A magic midge, a mighty warrior, a shape-shifting Gandalf with a vagina, monkey trolls, a two-headed dragon, the evil queen from Sleeping Beauty, and two comic relief characters that just piss you off more than anything. Lucas might have well just plugged R2D2 and C3PO into this one and called it a day.

I remember watching this as a kid and thinking, "I'll probably bash this in a movie blog twenty years from now" and lo and behold, here I am. That was a pretty good prediction considering I didn't even know what the Internet was at the time. Not a great 80's flick but there are some fun moments (most courtesy of Val Kilmer) and you'll never see a movie with more midge power than this one. Now they have robots for that sort of thing.

Why It's Watchable: Try not to stare with your mouth agape as an entire midge village, built to midge scale, comes to life right before your eyes! Plus it's always fun to watch George Lucas FAIL!

Best Quote:

High Aldwin: Go in the direction the bird is flying!

Bungelcutt: He's going back to the village.

High Aldwin: Ignore the bird. Follow the river!