The Poke of Zorro

Another candidate for Not as Bad as You Might Expect Theatre: The Legend of Zorro? I'm not sure, how bad were you expecting?

Legend is the 2005 sequel to the 1998 Mask of Zorro. I found Mask a fun adventure romp, with a likable hero (Antonio Banderas), his wise old mentor (Anthony Hopkins) and delicious love interest (Catherine Zeta-Jones). It was filled with derring-do involving swords horses, swinging from things, and often, scaffolding.

The sequel has much of the same - Banderas, CZ-J, swashbuckling, even the scaffolding fetish (I guess stunts on scaffolding just work). It's missing Hopkins, since his character died in Mask. In his place is a little boy, Zorro and wife's child - young Adrian Alonso, quite an actor. The plot this time around deals with friction between Zorro's life fighting oppression and his life as a husband and father.

And there's the rub. This "conflict" is profoundly boring - I suppose it is "relevant", especially to scriptwriters who had distant fathers and now have wives asking them to come home on a weekend now and then. But I can't say it makes a great framework for an action comedy. Or scaffolding.

Oh well, the movie's at least 2 hours long. That leaves plenty of time for derring-do, swashbuckling, trick riding, foul plots, California statehood, Spanish-speaking American nationalism, and I'm sure I'm leaving something out. This movie annoyed and entertained me. I think entertainment won out. You mileage may vary.