This opinion is likely to be confusing. Why? Because the movie is just plain bad. But, I like it and you probably will as well.

First, let's just go over the story. It's rather simple.

It seems a certain curse was put on two people by the soon to be mentioned bad guy. The bad guy is only seen in the last few minutes of the movie. Said bad guy fell in love with our (dare we say) heroine, but she rejected him because she was in love with our hero. In a move which could only be considered standard form (he is the bad guy after all) the bad guy cast this curse on the two lovers. The curse causes our hero to become a wolf at night, and causes our heroine to become a hawk (hence Ladyhawke) by day. Every morning and every evening they have one brief, tortuous moment to see each other as human.

Here, Matthew Broderick enters, and for lack of anything better his character might be called 'random boy who stumbles into the picture'. This is really all the story you get. The movie progresses as Broderick, whose character is your basic useless, bumbling urchin, unravels the true story of what is going on. We are taken through a few days of the lives of these two cursed people, and shown how Broderick interacts with them.

In the end, of course, the story turns to the attempt to help the two lovers out of their curse, and we meet a rather mad little reclusive monk who thinks he has an idea. We learn that he knows the two, and more importantly, knows the bad guy. I won't ruin the ending for you.

Now that we have that out of the way, the movie has a host of problems.

In general, the acting is below par. Broderick is not too bad, and Rutger Hauer has his moments, but if you really watch the movie to analyze it, you get the feeling that the actors aren't terribly interested in what they are doing.

The script just leaves you wanting. Part of the problem here is that with this sort of story you are just begging to know more about the characters, and you don't get to. Of course, the whole mystery angle is working here, and that has its appeal as well. Still, you want to know more.

Another huge problem is that (what with so little story) the movie really seems to move along with no definite plan. Some things just happen, and with no particular rhyme or reason. The three main characters are just wandering around and wherever they end up is where they end up.

In general, there is really just so little here that it is amazing a movie ever came out of it at all. If it was a script on your desk you wouldn't make a movie out of it, you would just mutter to yourself things like, 'well, what else happens?', and 'this is all awfully predictable,' and so on.

What the movie does have going for it is that it's a fairy tale sort of a story and its fantasyish. Two things that the movie world is not exactly flooded with. But is that enough? It seems it is. Whatever the movie may be lacking (even if you notice) you are readily willing to forgive. The feeling of the movie sucks you in. The dark and mysterious mood pull you in and you get wrapped up in the music.

While the characters aren't especially deep, they are the sorts of characters that you are willing to put something into yourselves. They are, luckily, somehow molded into fairy tale characters, and since you are used to such characters not being especially well developed, it isn't hard to let that go.

The sets and settings are wonderfully 'fantasy', and the music creates a sort of background aura to things that makes you think it might be the sort of music fairy tales ought to be told to.

If you let it, the movie feels gloomy and mysterious and fantastic. If you really look at it, it feels stagey and poorly executed, and whereas most bad movies try too hard (or haven't the least bit of anything to try at) this one probably doesn't quite try hard enough.

The movie is among the best examples in existence of how you can overcome the faults of a movie and make something well worth watching. This movie had several chances to be a terrible film, and it came out as a very good time.

Recommended:
Yes