Ladyhawke (1985)

This movie was recommended to me as something on par with The Princess Bride and Legend, and I like both of those movies so I checked it out... but it's an unknown for a reason.

The story is about a pickpocket who breaks out of an inescapable prison. When he's a good distance away, he brags of his escape at a local inn, not noticing the prison guards also stopping for a drink. Before they kill him, he is saved by a mysterious cloaked stranger, who later forces the boy to accompany him in hopes of being lead into the city the pickpocket just escaped from. The cloaked stranger always has this hawk with him, and every night the stranger disappears as does the hawk, and a strange woman appears, sometimes in the company of a wolf. The pickpocket discovers that he has stumbled upon a tragic love story... and it is eventually up to him to set things in motion to reunite the estranged lovers.

Matthew Broderick plays the pickpocket, and he really wasn't that good in this role. I've only ever really liked him in Ferris Beuller.. and maybe he just lucked out with that role. I felt that he was too superficial, trying to hard to portray some happy-go-lucky ne'er do well. Not that all of the actors in this film were amazing, but if they had chosen someone else the film might have been better.

The plot had potential, who doesn't like a good tragic romance? But I felt like they could have done so much more with the plot than they did. They could have gone into more detail about the lover's past. The male lover's motivations could have been clarified. I understand the angle they were trying to get, but he came off as a selfish, almost petulant individual, and they could have definitely gone into Michelle Pfeiffer's character in greater detail. They seemed to more note her beauty or tell stories about her, but we aren't able to get to know her as well as we do some of the other characters... which is unfortunate as she's central to the plot. When the time came for the curse to be lifted, I didn't feel enough of a connection with the pair to care whether or not they were free or doomed.

Another thing that dates the movie a bit is the main character's ongoing dialogue with God. I don't really mind this personally, but I don't think something like, bring God into the everyday, would be likely to show up in theaters today. Society isn't as accepting of religion as it used to be. It's tolerant, most of the time, but leans more toward the absence of religion than it's presence.