Brave Old World

Rating: 6/10 (14 January 2003)

In a totally fictitious Middle Ages, peopled by men, elves,monsters, dwarfs, moving trees and other more or less strange beings, another episode of the eternal struggle between Good and Evil unfolds itself in a succession of fantasy and dream sceneries where terror and poetry combine in a fantastic symbiosis. On the other hand some dialogues and monologues as well as some characters reach an almost Shakespearean grandeur. This movie has some images of rare beauty and some others which fill us with awe and wonder. And what about the story? Well the story is the weakest part of all this with the usual plot flaws and a lot of unlikely facilities in the outcome of certain plot scenes about which I will not dwell now to avoid being a spoiler. But who cares after all? The usual spectator of this kind of movies only wants to be recreated during the projection time and devoted to all the emotions that the various incidents produce in his mind. It's therefore intrinsically one more movie aimed at entertaining the spectator and not at making him think or at conveying any message beyond the simple one according to which Good must always triumph over Evil.