Willow (1988)

 "Ignore the bird. Follow the river,"

This is, let's be honest, a fantasy B movie script made to look like Hollywood fare by Ron Howard, a very conventional Hollywood director but ina good way. Yes, the evil Quene (a delightfully proto-Morgaine-ish Jean Marsh). Yes, the whole concept of an evil monarch destroying all babies because of a prophecy, let alone the narrative of a baby floating down the river, have potentially pretentious Biblical overtones.

This isn't a clever film. It isn't a great film. It's a highly polished B movie, where one may freely chortle at Warwick Davis' shifting accent even while conceding he's acrtually bloody good as a lead, outshining the disturbingly young pretty boy Val Kilmer who is merely adequate as a rogue turned hero. His arc works, though, from petty thief in a cage to lover to a princess. And the tempedtuous beginnings of their relationship are fun, as is much else.There;s a nice mix between straightforward adventure and comedy.

Jean Marsh is, as if it needed saying, the perfect baddie, chewing the scenery exactly to the right degree. It's good to see Billy Barty, a year after Masters of the Universe, as a cheerfully winging it wizard. The cast is, overall, a success. There's no CGI here;the special effects are real, eithet green screen or stop motion.

Yet it's hard not to see this film as a cheeky reworking of Lord of the Rings, and a cheeky little prompt to Peter Jackson in doing the real thing,