**THE UGLY: ‘LEGEND’**

WRITING: 40
ACTING: 55
LOOK: 85
SOUND: 70
FEEL: 55
NOVELTY: 30
ENJOYMENT: 45
RE-WATCHABILITY: 45
INTRIGUE: 30
EXPECTATIONS: 35

----

**THE GOOD:**

It’s amazing how well most of the visuals have stood the test of time. Ridley Scott has truly spent a great deal of time and energy to deliver a magical, yet realistic film experience visually. The enchanted forest looks beautiful, the monster prosthetics are life-like and the light and weather effects help to keep up a magical atmosphere.

The only truly memorable performance is Tim Curry, appearing under heavy make-up as the villain, Darkness. His performance is memorably over-the-top and delicious.

----

**THE BAD:**

A young Tom Cruise feels somewhat uncomfortable in this film, and his performance never reaches its full potential. It is at times stiff and unnatural, a bit like watching a school play. The same goes for Mia Sara, perhaps to an even bigger extent.

Tim Curry’s involvement is minor, and there is no real tension or sense of darkness and danger until the climax, which makes the build-up to it feel weak.

Some of the dialogue is so cringeworthily clichéd that it turns unintentionally funny. Then there’s the pretentiously poetic dialogue that dies nothing but sound stiff as Shakespearian.

The first act seems to struggle to set-up a proper main plot. It’s a bit all over the place, trying to cram in loads of stuff while achieving fairly little. It’s struggling to put the pieces together before setting Jack on his journey. Still, most of this bizarre fantasy atmosphere remains through the rest of the film, as it never truly finds its footing.

Oh, my Lord, Gump is a creepy character, and not in a good way. The Gump sequence at the end of the first act is my least favourite scene in the entire film.

The plot is essentially a fundamental hero’s journey-type of a story that has been done several times before and since with some added strangeness from the magical musing within the fantasy world that makes the plot bizarre rather than unique.

Legend mostly feels like a string of more or less useful encounters with different friendly and unfriendly creatures, and it never feels like a true, magical adventure.

Overall, I would have wished for perhaps a slightly lighter tone and a clearer plot structure.

----

**THE UGLY:**

They say this film was a source of inspiration for the Legend of Zelda games, and it’s easy to see why.

----

**THE VERDICT:**

_Come for a creepy Tim Curry and stay for a dashing Tom Cruise, because there isn’t much else here that is truly worth watching._

**49% = :heavy_minus_sign: = UGLY**

Entertaining enough fantasy-adventure doesn't offer a whole lot in terms of character development and I'm not entirely sure Tom Cruise was right for that role, but it was okay and the production design and prosthetics were impressive. Kind of an oddity as a Ridley Scott film, felt more like something Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard or even Robert Zemeckis would've directed. **3.5/5**