In a sentenceA Viking comedy in which the man doing the least gets most of the laughs
Erik (Tim Robbins) is a peace-loving Viking, surrounded by a company that includes Sven the Berserk (Tim McInnerny), Ivar the Boneless (John Gordon Sinclair) and Keitel Blacksmith (Gary Cady). His aversion to violence sits awkwardly with Viking life. The story also features Erik’s Grandfather (Mickey Rooney), Freya (Eartha Kitt), Loki (Antony Sher) and Halfdan the Black (John Cleese). King Arnulf (Terry Jones) and Princess Aud (Imogen Stubbs) complete the principal company in a fantasy adventure that mixes its Viking characters with royalty and comedy.
Terry Jones gives his Viking comedy a likeable assortment of eccentrics, but too few jokes worth the journey. Tim Robbins struggles at its centre; John Cleese makes better use of his smaller part.
Erik the Viking has enough peculiar people for a good comedy and too little comic purpose to keep them busy. Terry Jones, who writes and directs, puts a peace-loving Viking at the centre of a fantasy adventure, then struggles to make either the jokes or the adventure work. The idea is appealing: a man unsuited to the life expected of him ought to have plenty to get upset about. The difficulty is finding enough funny things for him to do across 107 minutes.
Tim Robbins plays Erik, and his gentleness is a reasonable starting point for the character. A reluctant participant can be good company when everyone around him takes the business of being heroic seriously. But Tim Robbins gives us too little beyond that initial incongruity, while Terry Jones’s screenplay seems to expect it to remain funny without much development. We understand why Erik belongs at the centre of this particular comedy, yet he rarely gives us a reason to look forward to his next contribution.
The Viking crew is more appealing. Tim McInnerny plays Sven the Berserk and John Gordon Sinclair plays Ivar the Boneless, two names that establish the sort of company we are keeping. Their collective eccentricity offers some pleasure, and there is enough affection for these characters to make the film’s failures disappointing rather than merely irritating. The trouble is that a promising collection of odd people needs good exchanges, and too much of the comedy stops at establishing that they are odd.
John Cleese, as Halfdan the Black, does better by holding back. We laughed at his restraint, and were relieved to laugh, because his performance does not insist on its own absurdity. He makes the part worth watching without pushing every moment towards a punchline. His limited appearance leaves us wishing for more, although a larger helping of one successful performance would not fix the writing elsewhere.
The fantasy offers little compensation. Ian Wilson’s cinematography and John Beard’s production design do not make the adventure visually engaging enough to sustain the stretches between laughs. That matters in a film asking us to enjoy an invented world as well as the peculiar people occupying it. The fantasy sequences feel flat, and Terry Jones’s direction supplies too little excitement to make us forget that the comedy has stalled.
George Akers’s editing has the difficult task of accommodating comic digressions while keeping an adventure moving. The result feels slack, with neither the jokes nor the action creating much urgency. Neil Innes supplies the music, but it cannot make these passages feel sufficiently playful or involving. The problem extends beyond individual pauses: the film keeps offering another opportunity for amusement without making enough of the opportunities it already has.
A comic adventure can take its time when we enjoy being with the company, and this crew occasionally earns that patience. The genre also allows considerable foolishness, but it still needs decisions about which jokes deserve to stay. Those particularly fond of eccentric supporting characters may find enough here for an undemanding evening. Choose it for that narrow pleasure, and do not expect the adventure to rescue the comedy.
Most critics take a dim view of Erik the Viking, with the comedy drawing the most persistent complaints. Praise is limited rather than shared across the reviews: Variety enjoys the premise and finds the Viking crew’s characters the chief attraction. Even the strongly negative Los Angeles Times review finds something to like in John Cleese’s restrained performance, though it notes how briefly he appears. There is little agreement that these strengths sustain the film.
The spread is wide, from an enjoyable comic adventure to a fantasy that offers neither laughs nor excitement. Empire locates the problem in a film caught between comedy adventure and the stranger, Pythonesque humour it never quite achieves. Other reservations concern flat fantasy sequences, poor direction and Tim Robbins’s peace-loving Viking. Two reviews lack accessible text, so their specific judgements cannot be established; the verifiable responses lean firmly negative.
The review finds the film enjoyable overall, with an amusing premise. It singles out the Viking crew’s wonderful characters as the film’s great strength.
Read the full review →The page appears to be RogerEbert.com’s review of the 1989 film, but its content is blocked. The critic’s verdict and any specific praise or complaint cannot be verified.
Read the full review →The page could not be accessed, so the critic’s verdict is unavailable. No specific praise or complaint can be verified from the provided text.
Read the full review →Ferguson finds the Nordic spoof sadly wanting. He singles out Tim Robbins’s peace-loving Viking role as one the actor would probably prefer to forget.
Read the full review →Bradley finds the film caught between comedy adventure and the leftfield lunacy it never fully achieves. He complains that its Pythonesque formula runs out of steam when the off-the-cuff stupidity is too thin.
Read the full review →The critic calls the film unfunny, poorly directed and unexciting. The review’s central complaint is that the post-Python comedy fails to deliver laughs.
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