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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 Erik Childress
"When You Get Caught Between The Truth And Jerry Bruckheimer"
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Does anyone really want to see a movie boasting the “true story” of King Arthur? What’s the point? Records and facts are for documentaries on A&E and The History Channel. Only when the truth becomes legend do you film it. The variations of the Arthurian legend are vast in literature and cinema. As a student of the myths and just a damn fascinating tale, I wouldn’t mind researching how the stories were formed. Every legend has an origin and an excellent film can be made from those roots. Antoine Fuqua and Jerry Bruckheimer’s version is what you get when you’ve forgotten where one left the seeds.King Arthur is very much like watching The History Channel. Except the facts are shady, it’s longer, not cohesive in its storytelling, there are no commercials and you can’t change the station. What we’re told is that Arturius (or “Arthur”) (Clive Owen) was a Roman general who rode around with his Magnificent Seven Knights and basically finished off battles when other Romans came up limp. Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) was one of many boys whisked away Conan-style at an early age to serve his 15-year duty for King and Country. Although exactly who is in charge is a bit hazy.
In Fuqua’s last film (Tears of the Sun) Bruce Willis was a Special-Forces leader of a small, elite team ordered into the Nigerian jungle to escort doctors and holy people out to safety, including the lovely Monica Bellucci. When they refuse he grows a conscience, taking out more people than he should while a nefarious army approaches with every minute. His team eventually gets tired of running and makes a stand.
In King Arthur, the title character commanded a small, elite team of knights who are ordered (on apparently the 14th year and 364th day, no less) to escort the godson of the Pope and his family out to safety. When they refuse, he sees the religious persecution being perpetrated, grows a conscience and orders everyone to leave, taking prisoners like the lovely Guinevere (Keira Knightley) as well. Naturally, they slow down the trek and are being followed by a “far and terrible” Saxon army. Arthur and his knights eventually get tired of running and decide to make a stand. In the words of Tom Servo – “Whoopti-shit.”
Are we to believe that the origins of the Arthurian legend resides somewhere within this bland rescue mission? All his accomplishments that we’ve heard about over the ages were molded out of this stale, non-descript adventure? They even murder one of the holy men they were delivering and their superiors don’t seem to care or even notice. This could have been Dudley Moore on the immortal quest for his hat as far as we care.
Merlin is rumored to be a magician, but is presented as a dirty hippie living in the words commanding a renegade Smurf army. Guinevere (who takes nearly an hour before showing up) belongs to these tree people. Despite having half of her fingers busted and reinserted, she’s able to maintain her pinpoint archery skills. Lancelot has a roving eye and makes jokes about sleeping with other men’s wives, so some guy in a bar must have made up the rumor he was giving Gwen the other end of the sword behind Arthur’s back.
At no time does David Franzoni’s screenplay even muster up the gumption to piece together the elements of the story that could formulate a legend. There’s always someone in epics telling stories to the poor of the great man who has come to save them. Excalibur was pulled from a grave. Great, there’s your sword-and-stone explanation. There’s an “evil” round table where every man is created equal. Fine.
So when did people start speaking of the Holy Grail? Was Camelot just an Alamo-like fort that the knights once defended? How about the Lady of the Lake? Was there ever a bitchy half-sister who thought she could perform magic? When did sorcery and incestuous kids with a Goldmember complex sneak into the legend? Don’t go looking for answers here, even in a playful Shakespeare In Love connect-the-dots kinda way because the movie is over before you start wondering if Arthur was ever officially pronounced as King.
You’ll be too busy figuring out who’s more bored – you or Stellan Skarsgaard (as a nameless villain I like to call John the Saxon) to care. Seriously, Brando never feigned this much boredom on a set. Skarsgaard appears so uninterested in moving, let alone voicing his dialogue that he just stops fighting people and even begins to hand out bread in-between scenes.
Fuqua’s direction of the bloodless action is lifeless with a lot of swiping, falling down and someone off-screen throwing in dirt every couple of seconds. I’d truly love to hear the strategy of two armies squaring off on a frozen lake after they know it’s already starting to break. Some misshapen Red Sea metaphor to balance the persecution angle of the non-believers perhaps, but more likely the filmmakers once heard of Lake Peipus and Alexandre Nevskii. Fuqua will never be confused for Eisenstein though.I can imagine Bruckheimer sitting Fuqua down in a screening room, popping in a copy of Braveheart and asking “can you give me something like that?” Any answer other than “DUH, yeah I tink tso” still wouldn’t explain the conception of this project. It’s certainly nowhere near a starting point for PG-13-aimed youngsters to become interested in the character. Those steeped in Thomas Malory’s “La Morte d’Arthur” or T.H. White’s “The Once & Future King” will leave with the resounding thud of “what the HELL?” I’ll concede I’ve lost the bet that the casting of Richard Gere as Lancelot would be the low point of King Arthur films, but JESUS CHRIST, Monty Python presented more of a true story than this.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10197&reviewer=198
originally posted: 07/07/04 14:01:02
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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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