Movie of the week: “King Arthur”. SPOILERS!
Basically I could copy and paste my review of “Troy” here because what plagued this Wolfgang Petersen vehicle also plagues this Jerry Bruckheimer “Producer of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’” flick (doesn’t it make you already suspicious when they put the spotlight on the producers and not on the movie itself?). Yes, it’s pathetic. Yes, it’s predictable. Yes, it’s verbose. It may not be quite as blood thirsty but it definitely concentrates more on the battle than on its characters, which leaves the viewer unaffected, even annoyed with Arthur and his knights. So much indeed that every single one of the 126 minutes is not pleasure but work to keep from eye rolling and commenting out loud on bad acting, bad script and / or bad score every 30 seconds. Because there is plenty eye rolling material in here:

Arthur : Knights! The gift of freedom is yours by right. But the home we seek resides not in some distant land, it’s in us, and in our actions on this day! If this be our destiny, then so be it. But let history remember, that as free men, we chose to make it so!

And it goes on like this all through the movie! I had enough of this pompous and soppy talk after 5 minutes, however Arthur gives a lot speeches, and all sound alike. If you’re an actor and get a script with those lines of dialogue, don’t you really really need the money if you agree to play the role? Clive Owen obviously did, but he didn’t do himself a favor. In fact, none of the actors did if not all are so hopelessly overacting like Owen who almost drowns in pathos every time he addresses his knights. Stellan Skarsgård as Cerdic, the king of the Saxons, comes to mind, and also Ioan Gruffudd who plays Lancelot as a mixture of womanizer and tortured soul. The other knights stay out of the limelight because combined they get exactly two scenes where all of them can utter their lines about how they want to go home, and that’s about everything we get to see character development-wise. Which leads to them being so undefined I couldn’t tell them apart till way through half of the movie, and that was a good hour! A very long hour I might add, because even though there are lots of battles, strangely little seems to happen. Arthur and his men have to get from point A to B but it’s not like the audience cares very much. This can be largely attributed to plot holes so big the Saxon army could easily pass through: Arthur is sent to fetch a Roman family who lives North of the Hadrianic wall. Why the family even lives there when it is not Roman territory is never explained, nor how news from Rome can reach this family if they don’t reach Arthur.

Apart from missing explanations, we also get missing motivations aplenty, especially when it comes to the character’s relationships. Arthur and Guinevere seem to become a couple simply because the only other woman who appears on screen is too old for Arthur. Keira Knightley and Clive Owen together spark as much as a wet loaf of toast, despite Keira’s desperate attempts at pursing her lips seductively. What do you expect when they are giving roughly two scenes in which they are alone, and setting someone’s knuckles right isn’t terribly romantic, either. The unsuccessful try of a sex scene is embarrassing in its lack of passion and apparently again not motivated by the characters but by the script alone (and the desire to show some bare skin, Keira Knightley’s in this case). The fact these two characters marry in the end is not surprising at all, but it’s because the script is predictable and not because the love between Arthur and Guinevere is so unbelievably strong there is no other way. The romantic in me saw much more potential for a Lancelot / Arthur bond as their relationship is also far more developed than any Guinevere seems to have with either of them. In the light of the Arthur legend, the lack of any interaction between the Celtic girl and Lancelot seems strange, all we get is a throwaway remark (whose only reason of existence seems to be the use in the trailer) and some stolen glances. Yet Lancelot comes to Guinevere’s rescue in the final battle, and it is Guinevere who kneels next to Lancelot’s dead body when Arthur has predictably slain the Saxons’ king. And not that Lancelot’s death was very surprising either: it was a dead (sorry for the pun) giveaway he would be killed the minute he announced how he wanted to be burried. More giveaways weren’t needed to tell you how the film would end: of course the knights come to Arthur’s help in the end. Of course Galahad gets killed by Cerdic. Of course Arthur kills Cerdic for this. Yawn. What else is new?

It’s not that the ending was clear but what was presented on the way to get there that made this movie seem endless. It misses everything “Pirates of the Caribbean” had, good humor (and not those lame attempts at teasing among the knights), likeable characters (raise your hand if you didn’t want to shake at least one of the characters repeatedly) and a story that offers variety (not battle after battle in the fog). It’s almost uncanny how the movie presents exactly the wrong scenes to tell its story. Things that are said don’t matter, and things that are not said matter very much, like Arthur’s sudden alliance with the Woads – when did that happen? While we’re talking about the Woads, I liked the idea of Merlin being kind of a wood warrior painted in green but in the end, they didn’t develop it. It’s certainly laudable to try to break some Arthur cliches that are so well-known (like Merlin being a magician) but I think that is also the biggest problem “King Arthur” has. We are so used to images of Camelot being a medieval court complete with knights in silver armor and graceful maids that presenting something so different is always a risk. You can’t just assume that the audience is ready to let go of its beloved Arthur impressions, and “King Arthur” does nothing to make you want to. For one thing, if they go on to say they are presenting a version of the story more historically apt, then errors like the Saxons attacking from the wrong direction (North not South) are embarrassing. Trying to make it more ethnic by having the characters shout all the time is just as stupid. Hoping mass scenes will paper over lack of plot and underdeveloped characters shows you underestimate your audience. And believing you can instill your movie with some spirituality by building a frame unbelievably corny (the reborn horses) tells all you’re interested in is not a good movie, but the money you can make with something hastily patched together.
2 out of 6 Meeps – disappointing.