Friday, October 28, 2005

Friday Movie Reviews: "The Legend Of Zorro" Or..."The Swishbucker Returns"

"You must cast aside all rules of our space-time continuum to appreciate a fantasy like this one, though even then you might consider 130 minutes to be too much of a good thing."-- Lawrence Toppman, CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

"If the question is whether passion, excitement and intrigue can be written into the narrative of marriage, the answer in The Legend of Zorro is an emphatic no."-- Gary Thompson, PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS

"This overproduced, sporadically entertaining sequel to The Mask of Zorro strives so hard to relate to contemporary audiences that it loses all sense of itself as a period piece."-- Bob Strauss, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

"More of a rainy day diversion than a sunny morning matinee thrill ride."-- Brent Simon, NOW PLAYING MAGAZINE

"Original-haters with phenomenally low expectations will find a decent family action movie that, while still obnoxiously long, features more of the right kind of silly thrills."-- Nick Rogers, STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER (SPRINGFIELD, IL)

"Here, even Banderas sounds like he's having a hard time sounding authentic."-- Peter Rainer, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

"In what should've been Antonio Banderas's finest hour as the Mexican superhero, he is instead swallowed up by a second film that doesn't know what to do with him."-- Brian Orndorf, EFILMCRITIC.COM

"The Legend of Zorro kicks off with a ridiculously over-the-top action sequence that feels as though it'd be more at home in The Three Amigos..."-- David Nusair, REEL FILM REVIEWS

"often seems as flat as a tortilla. Die-hard fans of the first film might be more forgiving... Even the most patient viewers, however, may get a trifle antsy..."-- James Sanford, KALAMAZOO GAZETTE

"Demand a director's cut -- at least 30-40 minutes shorter -- before you see ... this long and tedious stunt extravaganza."-- Steve Rhodes, INTERNET REVIEWS

"The passionless string of the hoariest clichιs is burnished with the phony luster of an I Can't Believe It's Not Butter commercial, and its plot seems to have been amalgamated by a computer program."-- Mark Rahner, SEATTLE TIMES

"In this busy sequel to 1998's The Mask of Zorro, Antonio Banderas looks a little older, Catherine Zeta-Jones snares a bigger role, and the powerful charms of both are weighed down by an absurdly plot-heavy script."-- Connie Ogle, MIAMI HERALD

Hey, it's Banderas the Mambo who never could act and made one, and only one movie where it seemed someone actually asked him to try. "The 13th Warrior", or "Eaters of the Dead", or whatever name you prefer to give the sloppy Michael Crichton book turned into a reasonably well done action-adventure movie.

Now he's a Swishbuckler and it's so bad it'll be thought of as good in the years to come.

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