Continuing the Saturday afternoon matinee fare. Directed by John Boorman and witlessly adapted by him and Rospo Pallenberg from Thomas Malory's epic. The cast (mostly British) has many big names (Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Ciarán Hinds) and nary a decent performance from any of them. It's hard to believe this was made so soon after Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Nicol Williamson's Merlin would not have been out of place in that movie.
The pacing is very poor and after some initial continuity we're just shown set piece after set piece. Nothing much is motivated beyond that initial movement: the land needs a King, and the sword knows that King. So often a character cries "X!" which is immediately followed by a scene showing X. Helen Mirren's sex scene must have been the only one in her career where she kept her clothes on.
I expected it to be a little fun, like Boorman's earlier Zardoz, but no.
Roger Ebert: two-and-a-half stars. "Maddeningly arbitrary" — but is that Boorman's fault? Vincent Canby. Pretentious. Both preferred Star Wars.
