Written by Old Bluffer 23rd Apr 2006

Tristan embarks on a raid to rescue his Cornish countrymen from vicious Irish raiders, and manages to use up several lifetimes worth of luck in the process.

First of all he gets savagely slashed across his six-pack by a giant warrior with a distinctly Northern Irish accent. The six-pack is crucial, as it will feature in lots of gratuitous flesh shots later on, which will be shown in the special "chick-friendly" trailer that goes to great lengths to assure women that this is a romantic film with lots of poetry (another trailer was shot for the boys, featuring copious battle scenes and no poetry).

Morholt tries to woo Isolde with the traditional Irish custom of smearing greasy fish innards all over his "weapon".

That someone was going to get cut with this particular sword was never in question, as the wielder of it boasted early on that he coated it with the venom of the pufferfish. So, in the unlikely event of someone surviving being hacked by the 300lb thug from Belfast, they will be paralysed by the venom.
The venom takes a while to work though (rendering its use somewhat pointless) and Tristan rather disappointingly kills the Irishman before succumbing to it. I say disappointing as he also happened to be Isolde's husband-to-be (get used to improbable coincidences in this plot), which would have made for a nice fight later on in the film.

So, Tristan's companions find his comatose body in dismay, and after checking his heartbeat pronounce him dead. Presumably the pufferfish venom even manages to stop the heart from beating without killing its victim!

Young Tristan is highly thought of, which warrants a full hero's funeral, so he is accordingly laid out in a rowing boat filled with tinder and bales of branches and pushed out into the open ocean. Archers on the clifftops then cinematically set the boat ablaze, to the exact same twee medieval music that accompanies every other scene in the film, regardless of mood or pacing.



Notice how much tinder is piled up on that boat.

So, to recap, Tristan is paralysed, set adrift off the coast of Cornwall and his vessel is an absolute inferno. In other words his life insurance premiums are rising quicker than a Cornish king can upgrade his stronghold (which in this film is pretty damn quick).


If the English archers were this accurate against the Irish they wouldn't need to worry about being invaded.

Cut to the next scene, where his perfectly intact boat washes up on the coast of Southern Ireland.
Audience: "What?! But his boat, it was on fire!"
Director: "Look, he can't die, the film's called Tristan and Isolde for god's sake, and he hasn't even met her yet!"


This is Tristan after he has sailed from Cornwall to Ireland - note how his damn boat is still smouldering but he hasn't got so much as a lock of his stupid curly hair singed!

All sense of realism thus discarded the scene is set to reveal that of all the places the Englishman could have washed up, he beaches just outside a hut that Isolde happens to be visiting.
This is fortuitous, as not only is she a complete babe, but is also one of the few people in the world trained to identify pufferfish poison by smell, and of course knows the antidote. Sure enough, she tells her maid to fetch her "thistles and bark" and is soon happily rubbing herbs into his aforementioned muscular belly.

Before this can happen though, there is an utterly gratuitous scene where she needs to "warm him up", which she does by stripping naked and ordering her maid to do the same, so they can both frotteur him into life. Re-reading this, I can't quite believe it's true myself, so here is the evidence:




This is why Ireland's health care system is the envy of the world!

Interestingly, after lots of beach sex, Tristan reluctantly returns back to Cornwall and everyone is really pleased to see him. One would have thought the reaction in "Highlander" to Connor's miraculous escape from death would have been more likely. At the very least I would have expected them to comment on the surprisingly flame retardant properties of Cornish rowing boats.

One final note, much of this film is set in Cornwall, and yet there isn't a cream tea in sight, let alone any regional accents. The film would be vastly more amusing with some West Country dialect, even if it was just a token peasant bumpkin.