YMMV / Robin Hood: Men in Tights

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was the Sheriff all that bad? Was Robin Hood such a hero? Robin can seem like a real Good is Not Nice hero several times through the movie, while the Sheriff is something of a Punch-Clock Villain just doing his job - at least until he awkwardly attempts to rape Maid Marian at the end.
• Aluminium Christmas Trees: The Braille issue of Playboy makes for an excellent gag. In real life, Playboy not only produced a Braille issue from 1970 until the magazine was discontinued in 2017, it was the best-selling Braille magazine in the world for several decades. In this context, it should also be mentioned that the real Braille Playboy does not contain any images.
• Angst? What Angst?: Robin returns from the Crusades to find a tyrant on the throne, his family dead, and his home repossessed. He suffers a moment of anguish and then heads off to his new life of adventure.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment
  • The Home Alone parody bit, with the Young Lad running around and screaming at the camera, comes off as odd without context. Although for some, this left-field oddness makes the scene even funnier. If nothing else, the boy who plays the Young Lad is fantastic, and it also helps that Robin is just as confused as the audience.
  • A similar parody that's easily lost on modern viewers is the Shout-Out to Flipper when the 12th Century Fox runs off with a message tied around its neck to the sound of... a dolphin call. For those unfamiliar with the reference, it just seems to exist for slightly-extra silliness.
• Critical Dissonance: The film recieved mostly negative reviews when it released and was seen by many critics as a step down for Brooks. However, it went on to be quite financially successful and is still much beloved by audiences today. It also garnered a fair amount of fans from its TV broadcasts and home video run.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Robin learning his entire family has died while he was away goes from tragic to hilarious with his cat and goldfish pulling a Mutual Kill.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This was Dave Chappelle's first film. Who would have guessed he would later make a successful and over-referenced gag out of a guy named Lil' Jon?
  • Will Scarlett O'Hara is played by Matthew Porretta, who played Robin Hood later on in a TV series. ^note Which was riding on the popularity of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys at the time, rather than any Robin Hood property. There was also a Sinbad series then. They replaced him in the role long before it was discontinued.
  • A minor one, but the Italian assassin who Don Giovanni dispatches to kill Robin? His name is "Dirty Ezio."
  • Cary Elwes makes fun of Kevin Costner's terrible British accent in this film. Later, Elwes famously attempted an American accent in both Saw and Twister, and failed spectacularly (oddly enough, his fake American accents in Hot Shots! and Liar Liar are believable).
  • During the scene where the Achoo, Blinkin, John, and Will "fox" the rest of the Merry Men, using 12th-Century Fox services ^note  the Alfred Newman Fanfare even plays briefly , the Fox itself is named Mickey. This takes on a whole new meaning 25 years later when Disney buys out Fox Studios.
  • Later the same year, Dom Deluise would very briefly play Robin Hood in a way that does not end well for him.
• Ho Yay: Prince John and the Sheriff of Rottingham, in spades.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Adding "Oh it's good to be home, ain't it, Master Robin?" to the end of a Long List of misfortunes.
  • Antony Blinken ("A. Blinken") being chosen as Joe Biden's Secretary of State naturally resulted in a ton of references to the film, especially "Did you say Abe Lincoln?". Not helping the fact that this Blinken is Jewish (Achoo?).
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Patrick Stewart as Richard the Lionhearted. The noted Shakespearean is even doing a subtle Sean Connery impression, in reference to Connery playing Richard in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
    Rabbi Tuckman: It's good to be the king.
  • Rabbi Tuckman, who is one of the most iconic characters of the movie despite appearing in only two scenes.
  • Don Giovanni, who's only seen once, yet leaves a likewise memorable impression as the Sheriff's trusted cohort.
  • The Young Lad. Though his scene is a cheap Home Alone gag, the young actor's over-the-top performance makes it one of the funniest scenes in the movie.
  • The 12th Century Fox. Not only is it one of the best/worst puns in the movie, Pop Culture Osmosis causes the Shout-Out to Flipper to seem hilariously random. And the fox itself is utterly adorable.
• Padding: The stealth catapult scene has no bearing on the plot and feels more like a random skit dropped into the middle of the movie. Other scenes which do advance the plot, such as Robin first meeting Little John and Maid Marian visiting the Merry Men's campsite, are all paced rather slowly, killing a lot of the comedic momentum. Even the Don Giovani scene just seems to be here so Mel Brooks can do a Godfather parody.
• Parody Displacement: With how many other Robin Hood movies there have been before and since, it can be easy to forget this movie was specifically a parody of then-recent Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. While Prince of Thieves still enjoys a good reputation, it can get lost in the sea of other Robin Hood media, while Men in Tights is widely known by virtue of being "the comedy Robin Hood", a title that so far no other adaptation has challenged.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Dave Chappelle appears in his first role as Robin's friend Ahchoo.
  • Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will recognize the Young Lad as Tee from Quest of the Delta Knights.
  • A rather unusual example is present with a member of the film's staff: the film was the only writing credit for Evan Chandler, who would go on to be best known as the man who accused Michael Jackson of child molestation in 1993.
• So Okay, It's Average: Generally considered one of Mel Brooks' weakest films and the penultimate sign that his prolific film career was coming to an end. But even Mel Brooks at his weakest is still Mel Brooks, so of course it's still going to be hilarious, even if it's nowhere near as beloved as some of his classics.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Blinkin runs into what is obviously a fake tree at one point. Then again, given that this is a Mel Brooks parody movie, this may very well have been intentional.
  • When the Sheriff gives his "you really piss me off" line while upside-down on his horse, it's rather obvious the horse is an animatronic stand-in.
• Spiritual Successor: To When Things Were Rotten.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Quite a few contemporary references circa 1993.
  • For starters, the film owes its whole existence to the pop culture behemoth that was 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; if you're not familiar with that film, a fair bit of the humor in this film loses its punch.
  • Maid Marian uses The Clapper to turn on the lights in one scene. This was an invention in the late 80s / early 90s where you could turn lights on and off with a clap. Except any noise would set it off, leading to a lot of consternation on consumers' parts.
  • Ahchoo pauses to pump his shoes up. Reebok Pump Basketball shoes came out in 1989 and were the first inflatable sneakers.
  • During the training montage, pantyhose is passed out in plastic eggs. L'eggs, a prominent stocking company, used packages exactly like this during that era.
  • Robin's Patriot Arrow is a reference to Patriot Missiles, used in the first Gulf War (To be fair, they are still in use in the 2010s, though the technology has been updated since then and their visibility as a weapons system has gone down since then because they were a high-profile piece of tech in the Gulf War and not regularly talked about in the press afterwards).
  • Need to reach the villagers in a hurry? Fox them! A reference to fax machines, which were cutting-edge technology at the time.

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