Lists
- ranked 61 in Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time
- ranked 84 in The Guardian Top 100 Films
- ranked 100 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills
- ranked 148 in The IMDb Top 250
- ranked 355 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 372 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- ranked 397 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominees
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills Nominees
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of Leonard Maltin's 100 "Must See" Films of the 20th Century
- one of The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
Ah, the blockbusters of yesteryear. Swashbuckling in technicolour! There's not even a hint at depth: it's the Mission Impossible 3 of 1938.
The colour, actually, is the best part of the film -- Nottingham is bursting with heraldic trappings; Sherwood is practically fluorescent in its green. It's brighter than life and full of cheery optimism.
It's the worst part of the film too, in a way, because there's too much optimism. In an era where even children's television offers moral equivocation, this is so innocent as to be jarring.
Claude Rains' Prince John is a highlight, but can't compensate for Errol Flynn's grating cockiness (Robin Hood) or the never-more-out-of-place Eugene Pallette (Friar Tuck), who sounds like he stumbled out into the film from a tavern in the wild West.
Still, it's quite charming, and there's at least one good reason to see it: more than any other, this is the film spoofed by Men in Tights.