‘King Arthur’ deserves to be dethroned

Guy Ritchie’s “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is what might happen if you gave a couple of 13-year-olds $100 million and told them to go make a movie about the knights of the round table. There’d be giant elephants, video-game villains, “Lord of the Rings” swordplay, a medieval setting about as authentic as a Renaissance fair, kung fu (because duh!), and enough CGI to choke an orc.

Except, if this film were actually made by teenagers, it might have some adolescent charm.

Instead, this “King Arthur” is designed to be mass marketed to teenagers, and, as such, it reeks of corporate contrivance. There’s little here but the naked desire to forcibly will a new fantasy franchise into being.

Charlie Hunnam, so good in “The Lost City of Z,” which also is in theaters now, is Arthur, a young man who grew up as an impoverished orphan in a brothel. But he didn’t let that stop him from becoming as righteously ripped as a Men’s Fitness cover model, and as cunning in a street brawl as a UFC champ. Apparently that’s what happens when you become buddies with the town martial-arts master, George (Tom Wu), someone who no doubt existed in every Dark Ages British village.

Little does Arthur know he’s actually the son of kind King Uther (a wasted Eric Bana), who was overthrown and killed by the king’s evil brother, Vortigern, played by Jude Law looking more like a sales manager at Banana Republic than a mad medieval monarch. Vortigern, who is in league with some dark forces, is obsessed with finding the one man who can pull the sword from the stone, because that man would be a direct threat to his power.

He doesn’t know that Uther’s son is alive but soon finds out that Arthur — who, like Vortigern, looks oddly contemporary — walks among the living after discovering that he’s the guy who can take Excalibur out of the rock. Arthur, therefore, must die.

That’s when “King Arthur” veers into “Fast & the Furious”/“Guardians of the Galaxy” territory as Arthur corrals a group of motley misfits to be his “crew” and newfound family — including George, the magical Mage (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou), Percival (Craig McGinlay), Bill (Aidan Gillen), Back Lack (Neil Maskell), Wet Stick (Kingsley Ben-Adir), and young Blue (Bleu Landau). They vow to fight the king, and evil, wherever it may stand.

All that’s missing is a Dodge Charger and a talking raccoon.

None of this would matter if “King Arthur” had a sense of popcorn-movie fun. The mixing of genres and eras could be kind of cool. Ritchie, who co-wrote the film with Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram, does try to inject his usual tongue-in-cheek cinematic trickery, turning parts of this take on life in ye olde England into “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Swords.”

But that and a cameo from David Beckham are only enough to stir up momentary interest. The final showdown is so lackluster and visually uninspired, it’s like the director just gave up and went home.

Ritchie breathed new life into another British hero a few years ago with his two “Sherlock Holmes” movies but, sadly, this “King Arthur” dies on the table.

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 7:04 AM with the headline "‘King Arthur’ deserves to be dethroned."