THE LEGEND OF ZORRO. With Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Director: Martin Campbell (2:06).PG: Cartoon violence.
More a parody than a sequel, Martin Campbell's "The Legend of Zorro" reunites the director with the stars of 1998's "The Mask of Zorro" for two hours of ludicrous action, forced humor and self-conscious romance.
The movie bears a PG rating, down from the first film's PG-13, which, in this case, means parents have nothing to worry about. It has nothing in it that the most credulous child would find scary or believable.
The gang-written script is so bereft of originality and wit that it resorts to anthropomorphizing Zorro's gallant black horse, Toronado. The jocular steed teases Zorro at inopportune moments, smokes a pipe in one scene, gets drunk in another, and ends up striking a pose with his passed-out master that is a direct steal from the classic 1965 comedy-Western "Cat Ballou."
But the movie is in focus, it has great sets and its gorgeous co-stars - Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones - get more closeups than a stamp collection.
It also has a half-pint replica of Zorro - the scene-stealing 10-year-old son of Banderas' character, Don Alejandro de la Vega, and Zeta-Jones' Elena. Though Joaquin (Adrian Alonso) does not know what his father does while away on business, this Zorrito inherited Dad's genes for gymnastic combat.
These skills not only make him popular with classmates, who roar with delight when he uses them to humiliate their teacher, but will eventually make him a full partner in the family business of kicking bad men's butts.
Elena has mastered her hubby's gifts, as well.
Unfortunately, in this story, Elena and Alejandro are placed at odds by mysterious agents who have learned of Zorro's identity and use it to blackmail Elena into divorcing him and taking up with an amorous French count (Rufus Sewell).
Though we know Elena still loves the big lug, Zorro is all sorrow. In three months of bachelorhood, he and his horse have become dissolute drunks while the California statehood that he had worked so hard to achieve is in grave jeopardy.
The plot doesn't so much thicken as congeal into a series of last-act convolutions and proto-military science reminiscent of that godawful movie version of TV's "Wild, Wild West." I'll just say that there are characters who not only want California statehood to fail, they are plotting to fix the coming Civil War in favor of the South.
None of this rises to the level of a decent campfire story, and, frankly, I don't think even the screenwriters thought it would. The movie exists solely because of the earlier chemistry between Banderas and Zeta-Jones, and they just had to write something for the stars to say and do.
They are a vision. I don't know if I've seen a more attractive couple in an action-adventure since Errol Flynn's Robin Hood hooked up with Olivia de Havilland's Maid Marian.
But, well, there's all that other stuff.
The long and elaborately choreographed action sequences are almost literal cartoons. Zorro has always had great vertical leap, superb horsemanship and a way with a whip, but here his gifts are beyond eXtreme. If Superman flew by at top speed, Zorro could snag him with his whip and hitchhike to Krypton - with his wife and kid in tow.
Kids may love this stuff, and I'm jealous. I remember when Zorro was for everyone.
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