Quest for Camelot Review
by "Jeremiah \"Spassvogel\" Rickert" (rickert AT agora DOT rdrop DOT com)July 27th, 1999
Quest For Camelot
A Review
By Jeremiah Rickert
When I first had heard of this project, about a year ago or so, the first thing I thought of was poor animation. I am not totally sure why. Warner Bros. Of course has a long tradition of making animated shorts, starring charicatures and animals, but I couldn't see them attempting to do realistic humans. Now logically, no matter who produces a film, the art is going to depend on the animator. In this case, however, I turned out to be correct. Disney has set a high standard and Quest For Camelot cannot compete. Anastasia was at least a bit original in some of its animation sequences. (The impressionist paintings as set scenes during the Paris number, for example) and featured songs that actually moved the plot along.
Quest for Camelot opens with what looks just like the beginning of Disney's most successful animated movie, the Lion King, complete with what sounds like an African chant and a big rock. That immediately set the tone for the whole movie, grasping at Disney. The thin plot concerns a young girl's yen to be a knight like her father, Sir Lionel (Gabriel Byrne) who is killed defending Arthur from the vicious Ruger (voiced by Gary Oldman). Arthur (Piers Brosnan) tells her widowed mother Lady Juliana (Jane Seymour) that she's always welcome at Camelot. (which looked a big pile of rocks, rather than a grand castle, so who'd want to go there anyway?) The now grown up little girl, Kayley (voiced by Jessalyn Gilsig) is a real corker and acrobatically jumps around her mother's farm training herself to be a knight. Ruger shows up with a magic potion (that we never find out the source of) and starts to make an army of odd mechanical soldiers to help him overthrow Camelot, he kidnaps Kayley's mother to take advantage of her all-access pass to Camelot. Ruger sends a Gryphon to steal Excalibur from Arthur, which he does, because the knights all holster their swords on the backs of their chairs, and Arthur isn't the quick draw he used to be. (a 6yr old in the seat in front of me said --mommy, why didn't he just draw the sword when the ceiling broke open?-- He was right, Arthur just sat there until the thing was right next to him before he went for it...but it was too late. Merlin (who has practically no bearing on the plot at all) voiced by Sir John Gielgud send a special falcon after the Gryphon (voiced by Bronson Pinchot) who is able to disrupt things enough for the sword to be dropped in a magical and forbidden forest. Upon returning to Ruger, Kayley hears of the loss of the sword and her mother tells her that she is Camelot's only hope. The quest is on!
The songs in this film have a rather high-quality pedigree, but still don't quite measure up. David Foster, the king of power pop, who contributed greatly to the 80s sounds of the likes of Toto and Chicago, and Carol Bayer Sager have penned a collection of power ballads that seem like music videos rather than musical moments. They also enlist pop uber-diva Celine Dion and former Journey front-man Steve Perry to warble these over-produced pop creations, and that hurts because the singers sound very little like the people they are portraying, particularly the singing voice of Garret, Bryan White. Another beef, that the six year old in front of me noticed as well, was the fact hat on half the numbers, it seems they changed the lyrics at the last moments, because their lips do one thing and their voice says another. It's a bit disoncerting. My final beef with the music is the horrid attempt at injecting Riverdance-esque step-dancing into the film. My skin crawled.
The best aspect of this film was the comedy. I found myself chuckling fairly often in this film. The token comedy relief, in the form of a two-headed Dragon, voiced by Monty Python's Eric Idle and Hockey Puck Don Rickles, is pretty darned hilarious at times. Unfortunately, the humor kinda gets lost in the shuffle, particularly the one-liners muttered by Pinchot's Gryphon.
They put together an awesome cast, no bones about it, Jane Seymour, Gabriel Byrne, Gary Oldman, Piers Brosnan, Cary Elwes, John Gielgud, the songwriting team was top notch, responsible for millions of records sold, but it all doesn't quite come together. Perhaps the story wasn't enough to hold the rest, or perhaps the studio just isn't experienced enough to handle a project like this yet. Warner Bros. may have a long tradition of animation, but not of animated movies. Fox you'll noticed drew on the talents of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, both of whom have a lot of experience when it comes to animated feature films. (Rescuers, Secret of Nimh, Land Before Time, American Tail, Pete's Dragon, Robin Hood) to name a few. Comparing the two films is natural, considering they're both competing to cut in on Disney's market. Anastasia outshines Quest for Camelot in every way.
Of the $3.25 I paid for it, it was worth about $1.00
Copyright 1998 Jeremiah Rickert
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Jeremiah "Spassvogel" Rickert
6'7" 320 lbs of Dr. Pepper and Pez Candy.
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