Tuesday 28 January 2020

The Last of Robin Hood (2013 Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland & scr)

1959. The legendary sexpot Errol Flynn has died. His girlfriend becomes a gossip column target, particularly when her mum is arrested for drunkenness; then the girl is taken into care. His will codicil favouring her is invalid (though as it turns out, his estate is in some mess also).

How did we get there? Fifteen year old Dakota Fanning is spotted on set by Flynn (Kevin Kline), who immediately starts a relationship with her which her mum (Susan Sarandon) chooses to ignore (her dad gets it at once and promptly leaves the family). Nevertheless, they do love each other, and that's the film's main case.

John Huston's book mentions the Africa trip briefly. "Errol Flynn's girlfriend joined him in Bangui. .. Darryl was scared to death when he learned that the girl was something like fifteen years old. It put the studio in an awkward legal position. So far as I could see, the girl had come into this world older than most people leave it. Darryl agreed, but this did little to allay his fears.  Errol later took the girl to Paris, then on to the United States, where the girl's mother and a lawsuit awaited him."

The leads are good. With Bryan Batt, Matthew Kane, Max Casella (Kubrick) and Sean Flynn (the grandson).

It's no My Week with Marilyn, a film which comes back again and again. I think the problem is that it doesn't really do anything interesting, like bring in more Hollywood / stars, or really use the whole Lolita / Kubrick section, which is so stacked with irony that much more should have been made of it.



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