I hate it when I really look forward to a movie that’s coming out and then it comes out and I go see it and it basically sucks.

Touchstone’s “King Arthur” is such a movie.

The movie starts with a written essay up on the screen and then a bunch of maps—old maps. Make that old maps with names of places you never heard of unless you’re a Trivial Pursuit nut with a specialty in historical cartography.

That’s usually a bad sign when movies start with shit like that.

Then there’s this second opening sequence with a manly voice-over that tries to explain what’s going on, but only makes things more confusing.

So here’s my condensed version of this movie's “King Arthur” which is supposed to be the historical version and doesn't have any of that Camelot and Avalon and sword-in-the-stone and search for the Grail crap.

It's 452 A.D. and the Romans (who look like Julius Ceasar's Romans but are actually some Pope's Romans) draft these kids who are really good fighters-on-horseback, or will grow up to be good fighters-on-horseback, and who come from some place called Sumatria or Samatra or some fucking place that looks, on the old map, like it’s somewhere in modern-day Russia. These kids have some really cool, Arthurian-legend-like, Russian/Samatrian names like Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain and so on.

Flash forward to fifteen years later and this group of kids are all grown up. And now they really are bad ass motherfuckers! These are guys you definitely want on your side in a street brawl even if the baddest of these bad asses is the spitting image of Curly from the Three Stooges.

Anyway, they’ve spent the last 15 years in Britain fighting for the Pope's Roman Army against a bunch of half-naked, Druid locals who sound like they speak in tongues and are led by Merlin who badly needs a bath and doesn’t do any magic and who is the leader of the Druid revolt. The knights—yeah, they’re called knights already, albeit Roman knights—are led by this half-Roman, half-Brit guy who is very handsome and very dangerous and could easily be the next James Bond if they need another actor to play 007. The maybe-in-the-future 007's name is Arturius or some Roman name like that, but being the razor-sharp film critic that I am, I quickly figure out Arturius is Arthur… D’uh.

The bad ass Roman/Russian Papal knights are about to get discharged from the Roman foreign legion having fulfilled their 15 year draft enlistment but some Roman Bishop with a really thick Italian accent makes them go out on one last, dangerous mission to save this really greedy, rich, evil Roman asshole and his family who are about to be slaughtered by these bloodthirsty Saxons who are invading from the North.

They save the evil Roman and his family, finding the hot-looking Guinevere (that’s her in the pic at the top of this review) being tortured in the evil Roman's dungeon, just in time to miss the approaching onslaught of the bloodthirsty Saxons. So now they have to quick-time it back South to Hadrian ’s Wall--which looks more like the Great Wall of China in the movie--where the mighty Roman Army is waiting.

But the Saxon’s are hot in pursuit so Arthur & Company travel across these really high, snowy Alp-like mountains to the East to escape.

Now, where the fuck is there Alp-like mountains in England I don’t know-- I guess they’re somewhere in the East near the English Channel by those white cliffs. Anyway, these high, craggy-peaked mountains are in the movie in spite of the fact there’s nothing like that in England. (Nothing like a little geographical and topographical accuracy in a fucking movie, guys.)

So they’re going across the Alps and suddenly they almost get caught by the Saxons on this frozen fjord, cuz, you know, there’s lots of frozen fjords in Britain, especially in the British Alps. But one of Arthur's bad asses makes the ice crack and break with some clever axe-work and its like Moses parting the sea and suddenly you have a bunch of drowned, frozen Saxons. Now it’s clear sailing back to the safety of Hadrian’s Great Wall of China in Britain.

After they get back to Hadrian’s Wall it’s a big party until the main Saxon Army shows up and guess what else? It's time for the Romans to bail out and go back to Rome cuz the Roman Pope decided “Fuck those Limey bastards, I got worse shit to worry about” and so they leave Arthur, Guinevere, and his bad ass Roman/Russian knights of the Round Table to deal with thousands of blood-thirsty Saxons.

Of course, there’s this big final battle scene where Arthur’s guys kick some serious Saxon ass (like the audience didn't know that was gonna happen). We do get to see a half-naked Guinevere running around using a bow and a sword better than any of Arthur's bad asses or the Saxon's bad asses so that's kinda cool. Also, Merlin and his Druids show up like the U.S. Cavalry coming over the hill to save a wagon train from Apaches just in time to help thoroughly defeat the Saxons so now everyone’s all really tight and happy and shit and Arthur gets made into the King by Merlin the tongue-speaking Druid and he marries Guinevere (who he already fucked the night before the big battle) and I guess the rest is legend.


Actually, fuck this “historical” version of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. I’ll take the real legend any day! You know the legend-- like the one they did in the really cool movie, “Excalibur," or the one written up in the incredibly cool novel, "The Mists of Avalon." Hell, even Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" cartoon beats this turkey.







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