WATCH NOW
The lore of King Arthur allows for a wide creative scope, as seen by the bloody opera Excalibur or King Arthur, a pseudo historical masterpiece from 2004 by Antoine Fuqua. This concept was expanded upon by Guy Ritchie in his attempt of Arthur and the knights in 2017, in which he grotesquely merges high fantasy with modern day London. Arthur & Merlin combines all these shoddily made pieces into one lump of an abominable horror, and just like everything else in the modern market is made with slave labor, or as they so eloquently put.
From an overarching perspective, the story seems incoherent as it captures Our Lancelot and Arthur in their older years and Guinevere in a cave without any sort of coherent structure to support it. He finds it difficult to tie all the loose ends, which is similarly inexplicable for the ending as well, which has a charismatic fight in a naked throne room. His so-so royal son Arthur snakes away to lose against the Romans while guiding an adventure standpoint of his character. It distinctly resembles the Robin Hood legend of Richard 1 and Prince John. In parallel, the reasons for Arthur’s loss of faith and Excalibur, and why he seems to be so important for this type of character, are left unexplored.
Short takes the form of the scowly monarch and tries to overpower the material, which does not work, later fighting with the thin material. His character on the other hand gives off a sense of eternal constipation as Richard Short from the series Mary Kills People suffers from. You tend to wish that instead of feeling sympathetic for him.
As a general matter of fact, the movie is about Short and his not-so-great company of grumpy, tough guys in armor roaming around the same part of the Welsh wood and yelling in terrible English. Then there is Merlin, which is played by Richard Brake (or Joe Chill from Batman Begins) who appears in a couple of scenes. In one he literally pops up, which is strange, and then spends a couple of minutes blurting out nonsense before riding off to a place where useless wizards like to hang out. Why this guy is never in any of the scenes is just one of the problems that this film poses alongside several others that make this entire project a waste of time. To quote another approach on the Arthurian legend that this adaptation has some (not so intentional) likeness to, ‘Let’s not go to Camelot. This is a silly place.
To watch more movies like Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot (2020), visit 123Movies
Also watch for more movies like:
