King Arthur Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)July 7th, 2004
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There's a big fight scene in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and - all kidding aside - it's better than any of the skirmishes in King Arthur, the latest bloated, self-important, pseudo-epic-turned-gay masquerade ball from a middling director who thinks they're making the next Braveheart or Gladiator. "An Antoine Fuqua film" might sound like an impressive proposition, but what has he done for you lately? I'll tell you what: He's churned out a string of instantly forgettable, sub-pedestrian action films - most recently, Tears of the Sun - just like the director of Troy (Wolfgang Petersen), which was 2004's most recent entry to this dismal genre. I'd throw The Alamo into that mix, too, but its director (John Lee Hancock) is even inexperienced when it comes to run-of-the-mill action flicks.
There have already been approximately 34,979 films about the whole Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot thing, so Fuqua and his screenwriter (Gladiator's David Franzoni) decided to make a more historically accurate version of the legendary tale in an attempt to distance their picture from the rest of its brethren (most recently, 1995's First Knight). Sadly, they've confused "historical accuracy" with "mind-boggling mediocrity." King is so by-the-numbers, it's like the screenplay was cranked out by some giant, formula-driven computer. Then again, I felt exactly the same way about Pirates of the Caribbean (like King, also produced by the soulless Jerry Bruckheimer) but that didn't stop you morons from making it one of the biggest films of all-time. Pirates, at least, featured Johnny Depp to drool over. King has nothing even close, unless you're knocked out by Keira Knightley's extremely painful-looking bondage outfit (and I was, but not enough to recommend this dullard - let's not ever confuse wank material with art).
King, which ran two hours, felt like three and could have easily been one, features no less of a videogame-type plot than mothersucking Van Helsing. Arthur (Clive Owen, Beyond Borders) has been transformed from the 15th-century king to a smelly Samarian pagan-turned-Roman military leader (via indentured servitude) in 467 AD. Art and his cohorts have one day left on their 15-year contract but are forced to perform the dreaded "one last mission" (cue Danny Glover lamenting, "I'm gettin' too old for this shit!"). Trouble ahead with the invading Saxon armies and Merlin's Woad warriors, and then Guinevere (Knightley, Love Actually) shows up about an hour into the mess, looking far more masculine than Orlando Bloom could ever wish he was, even with fake hair glued to his girl-chest.
The tedium, edited to piss by Conrad Buff, completely fails to adequately portray romance between Guinevere and either Arthur or Lancelot, and has a shockingly difficult time trying to let us know who the hell we're supposed to be rooting for in the endlessly banal battle scenes. Are we supposed to muster hatred toward people who are merely protecting their own land (a/k/a evildoers, insurgents, and thugs), the holier-than-thou world power who does whatever the fuck it wants (a/k/a.well, you know), or both? Nobody at my screening seemed to care. I didn't see a dry eye in the house, mostly because they were all closed.
A waste of time full of people who should have known better, like Mads Mikkelsen (Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself), Ray Winstone (Cold Mountain), Stephen Dillane (The Hours) and Stellan Skarsgård (Dogville). Avoid at all costs, lest Hollywood thinks we want another summer full of this next year.
2:05 - PG-13 for intense battle sequences, a scene of sensuality and some language
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