@RUTGERS.ARPA:BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA (04/11/85)
From: Bard Bloom <BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA> Subject: _LadyHawke_ Beware of Otherwise Unlabled Spoilers (and other invisible bacteria) I saw a legitimate preview of _LadyHawke_ recently. It was as good a fantasy film as I have seen recently, except maybe for _Wizards_. Most of the film was well-done but left a generic flavor in the back of the mind: most of the characters are stock characters. The exception (one of the main characters) was Philippe the thief, who acted like a vanilla thief, cowardly and so forth (the ghost of the Grey Mouser just cut my throat, but I'll deal with him later); but Philippe got some very good lines. (He kept talking to God -- who never answered, directly at least -- saying things like ``I'd like to think that there's some higher meaning to all of this. That would reflect very well on you.'' I think that they lost a lot of good characters by accident. The Evil Priest was rather boring: not actively evil, not even very oily. The worst one was LadyHawke herself: when she was human, she usually acted comatose. (Once or twice she was somewhat sensible) Admittedly, she has an excuse: she gets turned into a hawk all day, and if she wants to do anything she has to stay up most of the night, so I suppose she's stupefied from lack of sleep all the time. Still, if there were a FEMINIST-SF-LOVERS bboard, I'd flame long and loud. The fundamental idea is interesting, even if they do pound it into you with several hammers. Two lovers under a curse: she becomes a hawk in the day, he becomes a wolf at night. They don't retain their minds in animal form, which would make it more endurable. They do keep some personality, though; so the wolf doesn't tear out his girlfriend's throat. The movie explores this as well as any movie can (I'm biased toward books). It's lots of fun. Go see it. ``The Immoral'' Bard -------