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King Arthur

Very occasionally, I see a movie that is so spectacularly bad that I get a nose bleed. I was fully expecting one with King Arthur, in fact I already had the tissues at the ready. I tried to console myself, as I was putting in the DVD, with the thought that at least Wanna Be Hot Bad Guy Ioan Gruffudd was in the movie. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I was dreading. And in the movie's defense, I didn't start laughing inappropriately until four minutes in.

King Arthur purports to be the "true story" of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, and those other guys. The problem with this is that there is no One True Story of King Arthur. Most Arthurian experts agree that he was most likely a conglomeration of many different people. Anyway, the short story of the movie is that Lancelot and all the other knights were pressed into service in the Roman army as children. They were taken from their homes somewhere in Germany or the Baltic States or somewhere (oh, stop laughing, Lancelot is practically the Michael of the Baltic States, certainly it isn't FRENCH.) The kids were taken to Hadrian's Wall in Northern England where they would be given their freedom after serving for fifteen years. Cut to fifteen years later, and Arthur, the apparently hereditary captain of the knights and a Loyal Roman, can't wait for his buddies to be free, even though one third of the residents of the Empire were slaves (I guess Arthur didn't get the memo). The thing is, the Pope, who is apparently in charge of the Roman Empire (as opposed to the Emperor, I guess, but then why isn't it the Roman Popire?) has one last job for the SWAT team of the ancient world.

The Mission? To go to the other side of the wall to rescue a Roman family that is threatened by an invading Saxon Horde, who apparently lost their map and instead of invading from the south and forcing the Britons toward Wales and Northern England decided to instead invade by forcing people toward Hadrian's wall and giving both invadees and invaders nowhere to go. Interesting idea. What was the Roman family doing settling on the other side of the Wall? Seemingly hanging around with Chico Marx, as they picked up his fake Italian accent really well. Of course, the guys are successful and they pick up a Cute Kid and Keira Knightly while they're there. She turns out to be an excellent archer, plus she looks fantastic in blue paint. To sum up, the Romans retreat, the Saxons make their move, Arthur and five guys, with a little help from some overgrown smurfs, manage to halt the Saxon advance, Arthur and Guinevere marry and he is named King of all the Britons. Tidy.

The version of the movie that I rented was the Unrated, Director's Cut of the film. Since there's virtually no nudity, I assume the unrating part of it comes from the Excessive Gore. There's blood flying every which way throughout most of the battle scenes, so if you've got a sensitive stomach, I'd get the regular version. Or you can rent the Horatio Hornblower movies, in which Ioan Gruffudd is a lot less unwashed. In fact, Mr. Hornblower probably wouldn't have allowed the Knights on his ship at all. But I digress. There were things about this movie that I liked, the fighting sequences and the several minutes of pondering how Mr. Gruffudd would look out of his armor being the most notable bits. However the story itself is completely unbelievable, the acting was wretched, and the dialogue is the worst I've heard this side of Star Wars. Especially the bit where Arthur is attempting to rally his five troops to victory in battle by riding back and forth in front of the line shouting about freedom. Were the writers watching a touch too much Braveheart, perhaps? And so, in closing, I give you the traditional farewell of the Baltic Knights. Ahem, RAH!