[Robin and Marian provides] a worldly, wise, and witty response to our eternal wonderment about how our heroes lived ever after, happily or not….

[It is] a story as satisfying as any that came before, and far, far richer in nuance, detail, and pertinence, thanks to two masters of the genre—screenwriter James Goldman … and director Richard Lester…. Both know the blend of anachronism and actuality that puts vitality into the past and resurrects the figures in long-ago landscapes; both sense the starkness of the realism underlying the romantic adventure, the frailty of heroes who have human instincts, the fullness of living that obliterates our historic awareness of the transience of life….

[It] is a legend in itself, of heroes who grow old in flesh but not in spirit, who can still have a glory day. Lions in autumn—with all its crispness and glow. (p. 44)

Judith Crist...