robin hoodGrowing up is hard to do in Hollywood, and watching Dakota Fanning’s awkward attempts to transition to adult roles has been tough to watch as well. Watching Susan Sarandon and Kevin Kline effortlessly act rings around her in The Last of Robin Hood highlights the vast difference between affecting child performer and talented adult actor.

In 1957, 48 year old Errol Flynn (Kline) met 15 year old Beverly Aadland (Fanning) on a Hollywood studio backlot where the girl, who lied about her age in order to work, was a member of a chorus line. The notorious womaniser flattered and then seduced her by holding out the promise of a part in a theatre production he was involved with at the renowned Pasadena Playhouse.  Although Beverly’s stage mother Florence  (Sarandon) was initially horrified when told Beverly was meeting with Flynn to ‘audition’, she realised that Flynn’s patronage could open doors for her daughter, and opted to accept Beverly’s obvious lie that that their relationship wasn’t sexual. The girl and the middle-aged man fell in love, and remained together for the rest of his life.

Flynn died in October 1959. His health had been poor for many years following decades of abuse, and photographs show that the once beautiful face had become bloated and dissolute. Kline doesn’t look anywhere near as bad as Flynn actually did, an attempt perhaps to downplay the queasy age difference between Flynn/Kline and Aadland/Fanning. Nevertheless, Kline does his customary excellent work as Flynn, making the viewer warm to a man who would today be perceived as a paedophile (he had beaten the rap in a highly publicised statutory rape case in 1943 and his predilection for young girls was well-known); without an actor of Kline’s skill and charm in the role, this film could well have been uncomfortable viewing.

Similarly, Susan Sarandon makes a stereotypical scheming stage mother more three-dimensional than the role would be in lesser hands. Despite the fact that Florence essentially pimps her marginally talented daughter out to an ‘elegantly wasted’ playboy to further her own thwarted ambitions, Sarandon’s innate humanity enables one to feel pity and thus empathy for a very unsympathetic character.

Now 19, and increasingly in the shadow of her younger sister Elle, Dakota Fanning’s roles in adult fare have so far been underwhelming; perhaps Ms Fanning just needs a few more years’ distance from the doe eyed child that is still fresh in most people’s minds. Her portrayal of Cherie Curie in The Runaways was stiff and unconvincing, and as the teenage love interest of the prematurely aged roué Flynn, she is once again awkward and flat. It’s understandable perhaps that Flynn would have tried to seduce her, but that he would have renounced his wicked, wicked ways (the title of his posthumous autobiography) for someone as blandly unremarkable as Fanning’s Beverly is hard to swallow.

The Last of Robin Hood is built on a triangle of relationships, and falters on the weakness of the actor at the centre of this. Kline and Sarandon mercifully invest the film with charm and warmth, and without their presence the film would be forgettable and quite probably squirm inducing.

[Rating:2/5]

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