The reviews are unanimous. Every critic who has written about it, from its release onward, recommends it, and the praise lands in the same places each time: Errol Flynn’s swaggering, good-humoured Robin, which most consider the definitive one; the three-strip Technicolor, with its costumes and sets; Korngold’s score; and the fencing, above all the climactic duel, which several single out. Many also note that it plays as well to children as to adults, and a few frame it as the standard every later Robin Hood is measured against.
The spread is narrow. The one cooler voice is The New Yorker in 1938, which finds the production rich but somewhat stolid and thinks the supporting cast gets lost under the medieval spectacle, though it still admires the colour and Flynn’s agility. Den of Geek mentions the film’s chaotic production and its change of director, more as a curiosity than a complaint. Nobody else records a reservation.
