Reviewed by Andres De La Hoz

For some unexplainable reason, I decided to download Knights of Camelot. Unexplainable, because I'm rarely interested in watching shitty movies anymore, and that seems to be the wide majority of what's released nowadays. People seemed to be excited about this one, though. So, I gave it a try, even though I had no idea what the hell it was besides a few screenshots here and there, and wasn't really caught up in the hype.

Where to start? Knights of Camelot is a lighthearted comedy-adventure about a group of people in a medieval fantasy land searching for a lost treasure and getting into all sorts of zany mishaps. Well, that's what it's about in theory. Director Thomas Saville employs handmade characters and scenery. This is always a risky choice, because of wobbly character movement and less visual appeal. However, and much to my surprise, the attempt works off pretty well. Since this is a lighthearted movie, it helps that characters look cartoonish, with their movements being less realist and more exaggerated than reality. Character design is fairly simple, yet it works with such an affectivity that you can expect to see people cloning this movie more than once. Scenery was, for the most part, solid too. There weren't many hugely visual or technically complex scenes, but what was there was well done. Unlike most movies that try to add lots of handmade things, this one is consistent. Saville is extremely successful in creating his own little world here, with it's own visual style, character design, and overall cinematic look. The downsize to this is that (presumably to gain time) bits of the animation work are rough. Sometimes the scenery seemed strangely constructed, or rushed. And more than once were characters' legs missing, with our heroes being mere hovering torsos. It was slightly distracting, to say the least. In the audio department, the music was well chosen, and strangely, I didn't find myself cursing at the screen (at least not many times) for its use of contemporary songs on a medieval comedy-adventure.

I've got no doubt this movie is a technical triumph. It's visually consistent, well-animated, and actually serves its purpose. However, after the movie ended, I thought "Hmmm, it was good". I even posted that on its thread. But I kept thinking "hmmm... there was something wrong with the movie", and soon my "good" rating started switching to "decent". Seeing as I had no idea why, there only seemed to be one logical solution: watching the movie again. I rewatched it, and started realizing why this medieval action-comedy had failed to made me love it.

It's quite simple, really. While it's a technical heavyweight, it's a storytelling failure. Nothing happens in the movie. Of course I'm exaggerating here, but it's actually not that far from the truth. Here we have what pointed to being a comedy-adventure flick about a bunch of people looking for a treasure. But the storyline is weak and the execution of it isn't much better. It's like this: Our hero finds a map, then gathers some people, and they go on a quest. They have some stops, find the treasure, fight the bad guy, get the reward. That's the storyline. Sounds competent. But when it's executed, it's just completely uneventful. Everything just feels like it's a non-happening. There is no excitement in what's going on, no interest in where this is going. It doesn't feel like any of the scenes are actually more important than others, or that there's any sort of rising tension or anything related. It just goes on and on from one point to another, being wholly uninteresting in a narrative manner.

That's probably the intention, though. See, I mistakenly thought I was going to be in for some action-comedy, or for at least some exciting parody. Alas, I seem to have been confused. It turns out the movie is just a comedy. A comedy that has, as a background, a medieval "adventure". But there's no actual adventure, or medieval action. It's just an excuse for jokes. The great setting and visual style, which create a comic version of the medieval ages, are totally wasted. Hardly any of the jokes had to do with the fact that it was a medieval movie at all! All of the punchlines could have been taken from other sources, and it wouldn't have made a difference, because none of it was relevant. I mean, you'd expect that in their quest to find the treasure, the characters would encounter funny situations that made fun of medieval movies or stories, right? Right? No! There's no quest! Nothing happens! The way they find the treasure is so retarded, it boggled my mind how anyone could find it funny. Which would be the other problem. I could have accepted all these unrelated jokes if they were funny. Alas, they were not. A few bits of the movie made me chuckle, but most of it was lameness incarnate. Some have called it Brit humor. I call it lame humor, and I doubt it has anything to do with being British. The jokes were just weak.

Now, I won't lie to you. With all the flaws, the movie still isn't a bore. In fact, it managed to entertain me mildly. But there was so much potential that I couldn't help but feel this had the makings of a great movie, and instead is a merely ok comedy with little use of its cool concept.

3/5