Willow

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan, Amberly

I grew up on this one. It is a great looking fantasy epic. Ron Howard directs and George Lucas produces. You can see his hands all over this, from the awesome effects from ILM to the annoying comedy relief sidekick characters. But most importantly, the hero's quest structure of storytelling firmly in place.

Val Kilmer is very cartoonish when it comes to the hilarious obligatory romance. And the old school action scenes, like the horse and cart chase are great. The two headed dragon dude is brilliantly animated and the final old lady magic smack down at the end is great too.

This is right on the cusp of the digital world. It's the very best photo-chemical optical compositing every got, some of the stuff with the brownies is particularly great, especially matching all the camera moves. It's also famously the film that introduced the world to the concept of morphing, one of the few very early digital effects in the film.

But none of that matter when you are a kid watching this growing up. It's just an awesome magical fantasy world with a classic pure evil queen, warriors, creatures, epic James Horner score and an unexpected hero.

I haven't seen this for a long time, so it was great to watch it again with fresh eyes. It is much cheesier than I remember but it's still one of the better 80's fantasy films.