The Three Stooges meets Willow and The Mask

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2003)

What happened here? I don't quite understand how this works...
Two fantastic, disturbing, and fun horror movies shocked and amused us at the same time, The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. Evil Dead II left us with an amusingly unfortunate and suggestive ending, Ash got sucked into the portal and found himself in medieval times.
Okay, so he's in medieval times, it does leave the expectation that the next movie would be more of an 'adventure' than a horror, but this still isn't quite what was expected. Instead we got this strange comedy 'spin off' if that's what we can call it, Army of Darkness.
If you haven't already guessed by the fact that the title doesn't even include the words "Evil Dead", this is going to be very different...
The problem is, although a very entertaining flick on its own, especially for somebody who hasn't seen the original Evil Dead movies, this movie hardly bares any resemblance to the original 2 films. Ash is a different character alltogether, his cowardly behaviour and developing insanity are gone, and have been replaced by a one-liner spouting superhero who likes to say "baby" a lot. There is no gore at all. There are only 3 'deadites' or possessed people from the original films and they are all at the start(the only part which had even a remote resemblance to the original 2 films) the rest of the movie is filled with living skeletons with English countryman accents.
I'm sorry to sound harsh about this film, but you just don't think Evil Dead when you see a man's face stretched out of proportion like a cartoon and shaking it back into shape.
Don't get me wrong though, this is a good movie. It's thoroughly entertaining. Just try to forget it's an Evil Dead movie. Don't be expecting an "Evil Dead 3", because it doesn't work as one, which is probably the reason why New Line insisted there was no ED3 in the film's title. The relationship it shares with the original ED movies is pretty much the same as "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare" shared with the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies. It involved the characters, but it was different, and pretty much just a big joke.
It's best to see Army of Darkness as a fun flick made to answer the people who wonder "Wouldn't it be funny to see what actually happened to ash in medieval times.".
As I said in my summary, it's like The Three Stooges meets Willow and The Mask. It's a fantasy adventure, with cartoony out of proportion slapstick humour.