Overall Rating
  Awesome: 12.93%
Worth A Look: 18.37%
Average: 13.61%
Pretty Bad: 31.29%
Total Crap: 23.81%
6 reviews, 111 user ratings
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| King Arthur |
by Scott Weinberg
"On second thought let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."
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Proudly claiming to present the "fact-based" story of King Arthur is like proudly claiming to present the "chocolate-free" Hershey Bar. The beauty of the Arthurian legends lies in the magical, the mystical, and the mythical; sucking all that out of the story leaves you with a bloated husk of a tale, one that's innately boring, utterly tiresome and making its way to a multiplex under the banner of Mr. Jerry Bruckheimer.Last year all the critics took a pleasantly surprising break from their perpetual Bruckheimer hate-fest, simply because the supremely successful producer somehow managed to strike some true movie gold with his Pirates of the Caribbean project. One is disappointed to note that the perpetual Bruckhiemer hate-fest is about to begin anew, as his most recent film is one so dry and lumbering, so airy, aimless and unintentionally hilarious, it almost single-handedly obliaterates all of the PotC goodwill from 12 months ago.
Those who pay close attention to the movie trends saw it coming way back in 2000. When Ridley Scott's Gladiator became a huge box office smash and an Oscar-night juggernaut, you could almost hear all the studio suits as they whispered, "Find me an epic. Now." And just a few short years later, the moviegoers are presented with a new sword-clangy, butt-kicky, testerone-flingy, gigantic battle-laden, machismo-drenched, angst-ridden tale of historical heroism every three months. Whether you're looking at Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, Russell Crowe in Master and Commander or Brad Pitt in Troy, you're seeing what Gladiator hath wrought. (And, yes, Mel Gibson's Braveheart as well, but going back that far would require more effort than I'm willing to expend for a movie as irritating as King Arthur is.)
Somehow under the mistaken impression that the tale of King Arthur would be more cinematically appealing without all that flashy magic mythology, Mr. Bruckheimer took his initially silly concept and handed it to a director best known for a film in which two actors sit inside of a car for 110 minutes. (That'd be Training Day for those unfamiliar with Antoine Fuqua's only worthwhile effort.)
The film opens with a laughable scrawl, one that uses words like "historians" and "agree" - but the next two hours are filled with fiction so arcane that it makes The Lord of the Rings look like a documentary. According to David Franzoni's dry and derivative screenplay, Arthur and his men are "Sarmatians" under the unwilling employ of the Romans...I think. Art and his Sword-Clangers are sent on one final mission before they're rewarded with freedom, and that mission is to chaperone some kid from Point A to Point B. It's basically the same old schpiel you'd find in Deathstaker 3 or Conan 2.
Since this is a movie composed almost entirely of scenes, characters, concepts and special effects lifted from earlier (better) films, it comes as no surprise when the litany of double-crosses, heroic demises and motivation swings hit the screen. What is particularly unexpected: the hilariously incongruous and self-mocking performance from the otherwise lovely Keira Knightley, who plays Guinevere as a tough-talkin' mini-Braveheart with boobies.
It's hard to pinpoint what the most glaring deficiency of King Arthur actually is; the movie makes basically no sense at all. Those hoping for a cohesive and/or compelling story line will find themselves nodding off after hour number one, while those enticed by the promise of big-action escapades will find themselves impatient, fidgety and, ultimately, more than a little irate. The acting performances are uniformly grim and uninteresting. Even the normally excellent Clive Owen (in the title role) seems bored and on the verge of a coma throughout much of the movie, while a similar-looking group of sidekicks do basically nothing to distinguish themselves from one another. Everyone's gravely noble and sweatily generic.
None of the characters on display, and this includes the painfully inert and faceless Head Baddie (as played by a stunningly out-of-place Stellan Skarsgard), command our interest, nor do the side-heroes who, by all rights, should absolutely command our attention. How one could make guys like Merlin, Lancelot and Galahad so amazingly boring is a feat for the ages, but Fuqua manages to suck all the life out of his narrative with very little effort. Even what should be the crowning achievements of a film like this, the action sequences, are directed in such a scattershot and sloppy fashion; once one finally figures out where all the characters are meant to be in relation to one another - the battle ends. The film's best scene, one that involves an arrow-brawl on a frozen lake, starts out in rollicking fashion...and then promptly takes a nose-dive into overwrought theatrics and unconvincing CGI.If the original intent was to make a "warts and all" true-life adaptation of the Arthurian legend, the final product shows very little of that goal. Trimmed down to earn a PG-13 rating (from a movie that was probably just as incomprehensible anyway) and laden with every Epic Cliche you've ever seen, "King Arthur" is a royal bore across the board. If you're going to intentionally suck all the good parts out of a great tale, you'd be well served by replacing those parts with something other than dry political intrigue and painfully predictable gimmickry.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10197&reviewer=128
originally posted: 07/07/04 14:57:56
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USA
07-Jul-2004 (PG-13)
DVD: 21-Dec-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
15-Jul-2004 (M)
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