blakduke

Why is it that people who write movie reviews always expect a message from the movie or the movie to make some social statement, or worse yet each movie has to have academy award performances. King Richard and the Crusaders will never win an academy award for anything. Is it pleasant escapism, absolutely. Knights in armor, damsel in distress, nefarious plots all over the place, swords, pitched battles, good lord all that and you want academy award dialog as well?????? Many a rainy Saturday I crawled up in my chair and watched this movie. Accept it for what it is and don't try to milk more out of it than what is there. As for it being in the top 50 worst movies.. Like I said some people should not review movies. These kinds of film were being pumped out like cannon fodder in the early 50's. Ivanhoe, the Black Knight etc. Even Ivanhoe was not any type of academy award film and yet it received some very favorable reviews. So if your going to post reviews, reflect on what the movie is before slamming it for no good reason.

I totally disagree with some previous comments. It seems as though everyone wants message films, or biting dialog for a picture to be great. Whatever happened to films being made strictly for entertainment sake. If you are looking for academy award performances forget it, but for a rainy afternoon and you just want some simple escapism then this is just the thing. The interesting thing about the whole movie was how Lucille Ball foiled all of the bigwigs who tried to put the screws to her by offering her this movie to fulfill her contract obligation. they all thought she would turn them down but she fooled them and accepted and as soon as the film wrapped she was gone.

I consider this to be my all time favorite film. It has everything, romance, pageantry, action, adventure. I thought they could have expanded a bit more on the wars that the Cid did during exile. However I have to dis-agree with one review that stated the music was not up the composers former work. I have worn out three albums playing the sound track over the years. Some of the selections stand alone even if they were not a soundtrack. This movie should have easily whipped West Side Story for all of the Oscars. I have seen both and W.S.S does not measure up to Oscar material in my book, it was just a colorized, modernized Romeo and Juliet. Seen that tripe a few times. Nope El Cid should have gotten more than it did. It is a shame that they don't make movies like this any more. I have seen kingdom of heaven and it comes in way behind.