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Ah, Ladyhawke. Of all the big budget fantasy movies of the 80s, you get the least respect. Hmm... I actually kinda dig this title thing, where high zoom words made out of a daylit scene slowly scroll across a nightlit scene, with the son turning into the moon and back as is appropriate. And... then once we zoom out to see the title, the themesong starts up. The upbeat sitcom sounding theme. Well, maybe not sitcom, but it's definitely more lighthearted TV show than movie of any kind. The sort of thing that should be accompanied by "and Tom Selleck as Manny" at the end. You know? So anyway, we actually start with some dude trying to crawl his way through a wall of solid black mud, while the presumably evil Sir Redshirt here interrogates a prisoner who talks only in rhyme for his whereabouts. Rhymey is then sent to be hanged.
Eventually, he bursts free, and is revealed to be... freaking Ferris Bueller! I don't just mean he's played by Matthew Broderick. I mean the second his head is in view, he IMMEDIATELY starts breaking the fourth wall and making "oh aren't I so clever?" jokes. Just you watch. As soon as he makes it out of this sewer, he's going to go find his friend Sir Cameron the Dour and ask to borrow his father's mustang for the day. And now it's time to send a bunch of mounted knights off looking for him. So, what sort of chase music do we have in our fantasy epic? If you guessed rockin' 80s synth-pop, you are correct. And really, with how well it worked for The Neverending Story, shame on anyone who guessed anything else.
By the way, this is one of those fantasy movies where it's kind of distracting how clean everything is. It's like, someone noticed that the stone houses and rickety wooden awnings got dirty when they were setting them up, and made real sure to dust them all off. And seriously, if a scene popped up that explained that this really IS Ferris Bueller, having somehow been sent back in time, I would not be surprised in the slightest. Anyway, eventually the guards catch him after some wacky slapstick, and are about to cut his head off, when suddenly he's saved by a mysterious man in black. It's not the Dread Pirate Roberts though, it's the freaking leader of the murderous replicants from Bladerunner. And... really that's just bad casting. I mean, I know they're trying to go for the dark brooding antihero type to a point, but that has to be relative to the movie's tone as a whole. This is such a light happy movie that a guy with this sort of ultra-grim look on his face at all times would only really make sense as the big evil badguy.
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So anyway, yeah, Sir Replicant here and his sidekick, Screechy the Wonderhawk, save Ferris Bueller and carry him off to... stick village here. Now this place looks somewhat authentic. It also looks like a slight breeze would topple the whole thing. Inside, Sir Repicant goes over to his backpack to pull our his pretty purple dress, and bugs Ferris to go take his horse for a walk or something. Yeah, you've kinda been demoted to wacky sidekick pal. This is not your day off. You have grunt work to do. So he ends up gathering twig as the sun goes down, and shortly thereafter hears a wolf prowling around all scary like. Said wolf, which, honestly, looks more like just a solid black husky or something, ends up taking down the jerk who's letting them stay in the barn, right before he can kill Ferris with an axe and rob'em. So... Ferris runs inside, locks what passes for a door, and goes to grab the crossbow, but Mysterious Robed Girl out of Nowhere comes and stops him. Yeah, I'm going to go right ahead and admit that I have enough of a vague memory of this movie to explain the deal that Sir Replicant and Mystery Girl were both cursed by some jerk to turn into a wolf and hawk respectively, every time the sun sets and rises respectively. Presumably, the movie will get around to explaining this on its own, but for now I have to point out the weirdness of how Ferris and human-Screechy don't talk AT ALL. We just skip straight on to the next day when they're leaving.
Actually, heck. We seem to be skipping straight over a full 24 hour period, because here they are getting ready for bed again the next night. And now we're jumping ahead even more, to the NEXT morning, when some badguy is riding him to report to some other bad guy. They aren't really the most distinctive lot. There's Bishop priest Evilface, and his right hand dude, Captain Goatee, then tere's a bunch of evil knight types who generally wear bright red shirts. Meanwhile, hey Ferris! Don't use the jewel-encrusted ancient family great sword to chop wood! It is a fragile prop and you'll break it! And even if it wasn't, seriously, that's stupid of you. And... just after giving this speech, Sir Replicant chucks the thing blade first into a tree by Ferris' head to encourage him from being a jerk.
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Later THAT night, when Ferris is tied to a tree to keep him out of further wacky hijinks, Screechy comes to humor him for a while, and begrudgingly cut him loose. Oh, and she still isn't wearing that purple dress. Yeah, you'd figure we show Sir Replicant carrying this dress around so his pet/girlfriend has something nice to wear when they tag off on who gets to be human, but no. She has a whole bunch of plain looking street clothes, and at this point in the movie, there is absolutely no reason not to assume that Sir Replicant isn't just a secret cross-dresser or something. So hey! Let's have another fight scene! Been a while! It's kind of a weird mix of generally slapsticky and pretty much everyone taking a bolt to either the gut or the shoulder. Everyone but Ferris really. This includes Screechy the Wonderhawk, which really freaks Sir Replicant out and also looks really really really really fake when it happens. It's embarrassing. Anyway, Ferris is tasked with hopping on the horse and getting that bird to the vet IMMEDIATELY. Sir Replicant is apparently going to begrudgingly take it easy what with the bolt through his shoulder. Also, I can't believe how we have to be pushing like a week now of Ferris hanging out with these two and not piecing things together.
So yeah, the vet is Father Gravythroat here, who I call that because he's kind of food obsessed and really needs to clear his freaking throat. Ferris explains who sent him though, and now he's all business. Father Gravyboat is apparently planning to let her turn back before yanking the bolt out, but I'm not sure that's the best idea. I mean, I haven't actually seen a transformation sequence yet, and I don't know exactly how it would work, but wouldn't she just kinda grow around it, pushing it in even further? Anyway, when the sun goes down, Ferris is all So wait one sec... I brought in a bird with an arrow through the shoulder, and left it in this locked room, and now there's just some girl here with an arrow through the shoulder! What gives! So yeah, he's pretty well figured it out, finally. Oh, and it seems Bishop Evilface has another evil goon, Captain Caveman. And Father Gravythroat is ready to sit down and give us our big exposition dump.
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Short version is, love triangle between Bishop Evilface, Screechy, and Sir Replicant, so CURSE! It's actually a pretty nifty curse idea. Provided of course they're sufficiently straight-laced that neither party is all "Well... I suppose there's worse things to do than make out with a dog..." Anyway, Father Gravythroat is all "Hey! Good news everyone! I just pinged! Tomorrow morning I can prepare Remove Curse a couple times!" Which would be awesome if there weren't bad guys busting in now. It's not a proper fight scene though, because it's night, and our only fighty type is out chasing rabbits or chewing on his butt or something. So instead Father Gravyboat just distracts them for a while with fall-away bridges, and the other two climb to the safety of the uh... tower overhanging the cliff. OK, now, I realize this will work out because she'll turn into a bird mid-fall, but seriously, what were you thinking coming up here people?Oh, and no, we don't have transformation sequences in the budget. So... it's handled weirdly. Ferris needs a deus ex machina too though, so here's Sir Replicant coming out of nowhere with his crossbow.
Anyway... apparently the trick to breaking the curse here is for both of them to simultaneously give the bishop the finger (he said "confront" and he specified "don't kill" so that's how I'm interpreting it). This is kinda tricky what with how they'd have to both be human at once, but apparently there's an eclipse coming, and apparently there's a loophole in the curse for those. I don't see why exactly. I mean, if it was moon in sky vs. sun in sky, they'd have a fair bit of time both human every day, and if it were a lighting issue, there's plenty of work-arounds for Sir Replicant. If anything, you'd figure they'd both be screwed really.
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And... now Ferris is officially being given bird-sitting duty. He goes to steal some clothes for her to wear post transformation. This being necessary, because she doesn't have any of her own. There's still that backpack dress, sure, but that's Sir Replicant's dress. It's clearly not her size. Oh, and now he's hitting on her. OK, Ferris? That's what's traditionally known as a "dick move." When your friend, who has saved your life like 3 times this week asks you to keep his girlfriend safe, and in return you hit on her, you are a bad person. Especially in this context, where it's only an issue due to an earlier love triangle ending in misery for everyone. Instant karma strikes in the form of Captain Caveman showing up to kidnap her. Also, Wolf-Replicant gets his freaking snout caught in a bear trap. Or possibly some other wolf. Because here's a second wolf showing up long enough to distract Captain Caveman and cause him to shut his own head in there while taking it off.
Oh, and that whole eclipse thing was mentioned earlier as something like a day without a night followed by a night without a day. Now... is that them trying to say there's a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse back to back? Because eclipses totally don't work that way. Anyway, the next day there's kind of a weird line from Sir Replicant to the effect of "Man, if he just plain flat out cursed us both to be wolves or hawks, that would be so much better because at least we could still have sex that way." That's a uh... weird thing to say on the verge of getting uncursed there Sir Replicant. And the exact phrasing mentions that both wolves and hawks mate for life, which I'm pretty darn sure isn't even true, in either case. Especially with wolves. They're pack animals and all.
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And hey, what's with Father Gravythroat suddenly being around again? Where was he the last few days? Seriously, I'm confused here. This is kind of a pointless scene out of nowhere with wolfy falling through a patch of ice, and Ferris having to rescue him by uh... stabbing his sword through the ice nearby and tying a rope to it. Yeah, it does not work that way people. if the ice is thin enough to give way over here, you are not going to get stability by STABBING THROUGH IT over there. Anyway, here's a nice sappy little double non-transformation scene. We get contact lenses, and we get fades. That's about it. Well, that really passed some time. Let's get on with the climax already shall we?
So uh... any time you want to get on with it would be cool movie. Oh hey. Sir Replicant has an alternate plan. What if I just storm this place, kill the bishop or die trying, and then after that little suicide mission, you go ahead and stab Screechy Father Gravythroat! That'd be cool too, right? Seriously. The nice safe sensible plan has way too little killing in it to keep him happy. Again, he's kinda prime bad guy material going to waste. So... he's just picking fights and murdering some guards while Ferris is all inside picking locks so he wouldn't have to. And... now we have our black clad protagonist fighting the white clad Captain Goatee. Movie, you're being very confusing moral symbolism-wise. This, by the way, is a fight on horseback in the middle of a crowded church. Which is pretty neat. Everyone else in there is just standing there watching like it's something they see every day. This is also all totally wordless. Now here's a POV shot of Sir Replicant that's just really really funny looking, since his visor's down. It's like an interlaced FPS game except using a sword.
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Now here's that eclipse though, so apparently our psycho of a hero is going to go ahead and give plan A a shot, why not? Oh, and a guard starts ringing a bell, pretty much for the heck of it, which was kinda the signal Sir Replicant set for when to stab the bird. First off, not a great plan that. Second, why would that random guard do that? I mean, he really had to go out of his way, and it's not like HE was signaling anyone. Eventually people just kinda end up spontaneously getting back into the fight scene though, in slow motion. Bye bye Captain Goatee. You really were just kind of a total non-character in the end. So now it's time to kill the bishop. Or maybe give him the finger. Pick a side! We're at war! Well, kill obviously! It's not like his friend the priest would hesitate to stab a girl or anything. Oh wait, he would. So.. finger it is then? Ah, apparently we're taking confront literally. OK, look at her, now look at me, now look at both of us. There, that did it right? Except, you know, he's screaming all this in a very angry way. So hey, here you go honey. Why don't YOU stab him, I killed everyone else, it's only fair. Oh, it's not a knife it's a... shoelace? From the little falconry mask I guess? Well then, I get to kill him! Someone really needs to tell this movie that great swords are really really really not at all designed to be chucked like javelins. That's twice you did it and it doesn't really work at all.
Anyway... none of the other, like... hundred people standing around here, most of them well-armed and/or high up in the church, seem to have ANY reaction to any of this, and continue to just stand around while we get all happy and sappy and huggy and the happy couple start dancing while the two sidekicks wander off. Which is kinda weird. Anyway, overall, that there movie is OK, and I'm not going to bash it for having kind of an odd soundtrack. The one real problem it has is... they can never find stuff for the characters to do. I mean, the core plot? Rock solid. There's very little dialog of any kind though, there's no side plots. None of the bad guys really have anything to say or do ever, and none of the good guys do much except for two people having a little small talk while the other two are just mysteriously off camera somewhere. Even at the end where everyone's in one room, you never have more than two people doing anything at once. It's like this movie is turn based or something.
