The Empire Strikes Out WILLOW

By RICHARD CORLISS

"It was a time of dread," reads a legend at the start of George Lucas' new epic. Surely it was. We speak not only of the dour Middle Ages in which this sword-and-sorcery film is set but of the late 1980s, when Lucasfilm hit its dark age, after nearly a decade as the most profitable dream-mongering empire in movie history. By 1984 Lucas had produced five of the eight all-time top grossers. But that was a long time ago, in a land far, far away. Lucas' fantasies went murky (Labyrinth) or smirky (Howard the Duck), and his empire suddenly looked as frail as King Lear's. So Hollywood is closely watching Lucas' $35 million gamble on Willow. But will moviegoers watch? To a genre weakened by formula and familiarity, Lucas has brought little new, just a reprise of his Star Wars plot and characters in sylvan gear. His Luke Skywalker is Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis), a dwarf in a community of dwarfs, a young farmer put in charge of the infant who is destined to deliver his land from the terrible rule of Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh). On his journey to Castle Nockmaar, he acquires a few worthy friends and foes: an outlaw warrior in the Han Solo mold (Val Kilmer), a dashing knight with Lando Calrissian's righteous swagger (Gavan O'Herlihy), a willful princess with martial guile (Joanne Whalley), a Yoda-like wizard (Billy Barty), an ancient sorceress -- Obi-Wan Kenobi's kid sister, perhaps -- struggling under a curse (Patricia Hayes) and a couple of impish brownies reminiscent of Artoo Detoo and See Threepio.

These characters were not new with Lucas, of course; they spanned epic literature from Ulysses and King Arthur to the Lord of the Rings and Gormenghast trilogies. But Star Wars gave a high-tech polish to the rustic hardware, a kick to the old eldritch machinery. Alas, a decade later, everything new in Lucas' films seems old again. There is a shroud of inevitability, of why-bother, about Willow's chase through the forest (done better in Return of the Jedi), the impromptu ride down a mountain on a warrior's shield (done better in The Living Daylights), on the whole tussle of light and dark. The only twist here is that the crucial tug of wills is between two women, the good witch and the bad, over a female messiah. One matriarch fights another in an apocalyptic biddy war.

Any Lucas film will have vagrant charms. Davis is ingratiating. So is Julie Peters playing his wife, as patient as Penelope. Director Ron Howard (Splash, Cocoon) gets the social politics of the dwarfs' village right, but he is not adept at action scenes: some are too busy; others are botched. Kilmer tries hard in a role that might have fit Mel Gibson like an iron glove, and Whalley, teen angel of the serious British mini-series (The Edge of Darkness, The Singing Detective) is wasted as the heroine. Both Kilmer and Whalley, in fact, are curiously irrelevant to the climactic battle. But then, Willow is a Star Wars without star quality, an Indiana Jones adventure with the heart ripped out.

"Magic is the bloodstream of the universe," goes the refrain in Willow, but the blood is tired this time. The old legerdemain may save a kingdom, but it can't save this movie and, maybe, the fantasy genre. The man who soared on the zeitgeist can sink when it changes. George Lucas has worked his magic before and surely will again. But for now, the wonder wand is broken.