Hi Linda, you may want to take my review with a few grains of salt, but...

This version of Robin Hood doesn't strike me as much of a scalawag; he's more like an Odysseus saddled with modern morality.  There's some interest in how he manages to survive and advance himself from a lowly archer, and to be honest I liked Russell Crowe in the role.  For on-screen charisma beyond Crowe's silent appeal, I'd take Errol Flynn any day, but charisma has its drawbacks too.

Though Marion is set up to be more of a real woman than in other movies, the relationships among the men are better developed (Robin Hood's men-at-arms, his surrogate father, and also a villain/nemesis played by Mark Strong).  For me, Max von Sydow's scenes were the high point of the movie, even if the script he's given isn't all that interesting.

In a few brief scenes, I felt like the movie was pretty successfully evoking romance scenes from the classic Hollywood period.  Apart from that, a lot of the movie is devoted to political intrigue and the kind of hack-and-slash battles you might expect, which (however good Ridley Scott is at orchestrating them) don't excite me very much.

As for grimness, well, there's an attempt at political realism here, so it's a different Robin Hood story.  I don't see much need to object to this, except that this new realism is a kind of sham, and doubly so because it claims not to be.  I wouldn't call Robin Hood a very eggregious example, and for the most part I was just indifferent to it.  I didn't find it overly grim, but I do deplore the absence of real lightness in recent Hollywood pictures.

Hope this helps.  I'd be interested to hear what you think if you decide to watch it (or if you already have done).  I also recommend the Village Voice review by Karina Longworth, who pays some attention to the movie's politics.