Arise, Sir Becks... King of Hamelot: David Beckham's cameo may just be the best thing about Guy Ritchie's legendry dreadful King Arthur, says BRIAN VINER
David Beckham is really the least of it. Word might already have reached you that the former England football captain has a cameo in King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, and that he acts roughly as well as Sir Ian McKellen might be expected to take a free kick.
But, actually, Beckham is very far from the worst thing about his mate Guy Ritchie’s film. That would be the cack-handed narrative, or perhaps the ham-fisted dialogue, or maybe the director’s own tiresome cinematic mannerisms.
It could also be the tedious over-reliance on computer-generated effects, or the transparent attempt to evoke the small-screen swords-and-sorcery hit Game Of Thrones. Or Jude Law’s leaden performance as the baddie, or possibly the wincingly self-aware way the film tries to be funny, by reinventing the story of King Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) in the breezy style of one of Ritchie’s own gangster movies.
David Beckham, right, is to acting what Sir Ian McKellen is to taking a free kickÂ
Guy Ritchie is trying to bring us 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Broadswords'Â
The movie may have the worst single piece of dialogue since John Wayne in The ConquerorÂ
Thus we get characters with geezerish nicknames like Goosefat Bill (Aiden Gillen), talking to each other like a bad writer might craft a conversation between associates of the Krays. ‘You’ve got some heat on you, Arthur.’ Or: ‘You trying to get me doing something razzle-dazzle with that sword?’
Or, Arthur saying urgently to a lackey: ‘George, I need you to go to Londinium, gather the lads.’
That might be the single worst line of film dialogue since John Wayne, as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror more than 60 years ago, drawled to Susan Hayward: ‘Say, you’re beautiful in your wrath.’
In this instance, of course, the line is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Ritchie is trying, with mighty self-regard, to give us Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Broadswords. But that just makes it more excruciating, not less.
Moreover, it’s not as if there’s any originality in lacing the legend of King Arthur with comedy. Monty Python And The Holy Grail did it more than four decades ago, with infinitely more panache. No, the film has already bombed catastrophically at the U.S. box office, and its Britishness won’t save it here.
It opens with a frenzied, deafening CGI battle, which is doubtless meant to exhilarate us, but merely poses immediate questions. Who’s the angry bloke with the red eyes? Why does Arthurian England appear to be full of gigantic rampaging elephants? And, maybe most pertinently of all, shall we write it off now and go for a curry?
Still, no one can accuse Ritchie of not setting out his stall from the start. His film is like a two-hour trailer in search of a coherent plot, a pumped-up synthesizer in search of a soundtrack. It is a ragbag of special effects and set-piece fights connected by the merest wisp of a narrative arc. It is profoundly, relentlessly unenjoyable.
In fact, not only is Beckham not the worst thing about it, he might conceivably be the best thing. He plays a thuggish soldier, with some nasty scarring around the left eye that suggests either a life-or-death scrap on a medieval battlefield, or a botched tattoo removal.
Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn, pictured, appear in Snatched - which cost less than a quarter of King Arthur's budget but is more than twice as fun
His fleeting job is to give Arthur some abuse as he prepares to pull Excalibur from the stone: ‘Oi! Both hands!’ Rendered, of course, as: ‘Oi! Bofe ’ands!’
But despite all the jibes he’s been getting, I frankly thought he pulled it out when it mattered.
As, indeed, did Arthur. The son of a murdered king, Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana), he has grown up an ordinary citizen on the mean streets of Londinium and needs the magical sword to imbue him with the powers he needs to overcome wicked uncle Vortigern (Law, conveying menace mainly by whispering and frowning a lot). Also pitched into the fray for no very obvious reason are a sexy sorceress (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) and assorted CGI monsters.
Throughout it all, Ritchie empties his editing-suite bag of tricks of everything we’ve seen so many times before: the jump-cuts, the cross-cuts, the slow-mo, the speed-ups.
These techniques still had some novelty when he applied them to the story of another great British hero in Sherlock Holmes (2009). But now they feel tired and a little desperate. Coincidentally, when the end credits finally, mercifully, rolled on King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, so did I.
Snatched, made for less than a quarter of King Arthur’s estimated $175 million budget (£134 million), is twice as much fun.
It unites Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer as a mother and daughter, which is a promising notion all on its own, since Schumer’s dippy, accident-prone movie persona might be considered a coarser, modern version of Hawn’s, 40 years ago. And the latter hasn’t been in a film since 2002.
It’s a pleasure to see her back on screen, even though her character here is mostly a comic foil.
Schumer plays the vacuous Emily, whose boyfriend (Randall Park) dumps her just before they’re due to go on holiday to Ecuador. None of her friends want to keep her company, either, and no wonder: she’s silly, selfish and feckless, in an admittedly likeable kind of way. But she can’t get her money back, so she implores her strait-laced, faintly neurotic mother Linda (Hawn), whose long-lost capacity to let her hair down is evident in an old photo album, to help her ‘put the fun in non-refundable’.
Once there, Emily quickly forsakes her mum to spend time with a ridiculously dishy Englishman (Tom Bateman) she meets at the hotel bar, a rendezvous which enables Schumer to indulge her affection for brazenly ribald comedy.
Sometimes, it works beautifully. At other times, she and screenwriter Katie Dippold (The Heat, Ghostbusters) overdo the vulgarity, almost as if the mission to amuse has been temporarily shunted aside by a mission to shock or offend.
But the film breezes along engagingly enough, plunging into a whole new realm of gags when mother and daughter are kidnapped by bandits seeking a $100,000 ransom. They are carried over the border to Colombia, leaving Emily’s agoraphobic, emotionally stunted brother Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz) to raise the alarm back in the States, not very successfully on account of distinct apathy at the U.S. State Department.
With lesser performers, Jonathan Levine’s film would be a lot shorter on belly laughs. But there’s great chemistry between the leads, some entertaining secondary characters (including Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack as self-styled commandos) and a handful of genuinely funny scenes.
Anne's sweet romcom is hijacked by Godzilla
This extravagantly misbegotten film begins in the style of a Japanese monster movie, with a huge Godzilla-type beast terrifying a little girl somewhere in the Far East.
It then skips forward 25 years, with a startling disconnect, to a New York apartment where irresponsible, chaotic Gloria (Anne Hathaway) and her prissy English boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) are not getting on.
Gloria is an out-of-work journalist who drinks too much. Tim can’t take it any longer and chucks her out. So Gloria returns mournfully to her home town, and there rekindles an old friendship with her seemingly genial childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis).
He has taken over his late father’s old bar and Gloria, in need of a job, goes to work for him.
Gloria, played by Anne Hathaway, pictured, is an out of work journalist who drinks too much
At this point the film is developing fairly promisingly, if not very originally, into a romantic comedy, led by two appealing performers in Hathaway and Sudeikis. But if there’s one thing Colossal cannot be accused of, it’s a lack of originality.
Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo begins to muddy the waters with a return for the gigantic monster, which has re-emerged and is terrorising the South Korean capital, Seoul.
The beast is crushing buildings and people underfoot, and the TV news is full of it, as you can imagine it would be.
What you can’t imagine, though, is what happens next. Let’s just say that Gloria comes to realise that this creature half-way across the world is in some way an extension of herself.
Hathaway has admitted that her agent’s initial email about the project said: ‘This might be too weird, but it might be the right weird.’
For me it is emphatically the wrong weird, setting challenges for the audience that are impossible to overcome. Is the monster meant in some way to represent Gloria’s alcoholism?
Just when you think you might have cracked it, Vigalondo throws in another rampaging beast, this time a giant robot.
It’s all too bizarre for words, and more significantly, for comprehension. Besides, even if you’re willing to buy the film as an ingenious exploration of the female psyche, there are other insuperable problems. Not least Hathaway’s inability to play a plausible drunk.
Gloria gives an elegant little totter now and again, and can never quite remember what she’s said the night before, from which we are meant to see that she is a raging alcoholic.
Yeah, right.
If you can’t believe in the small details, there’s no chance of swallowing the bigger picture.
Most watched News videos
- Behind the scenes: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle goof around
- Meghan Markle says Prince Harry proposal was 'amazing surprise'
- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle discuss meeting for the first time
- 'She's capable of anything' Prince Harry gushes over fiancé Meghan
- Prince Harry: 'Hopefully we'll start a family in the near future'
- 'She's an incredible woman' Meghan Markle on meeting the Queen
- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announce their engagement
- The late Malcolm Young is farewelled at St Mary's Cathedral
- Nutcracker performed for First Lady at the White House
- Shocking deadly knife fight leads to pram being hurled into a road
- Lip reading: Harry describes moment he knew they were meant to be
- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's tender moments during engagement
- 'We knew there was something there that was so solid, so...
- Meghan ditches America: Harry's bride to-be will apply...
- Tears for a legend: Ex-AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson is...
- When social media bragging goes wrong! Hilarious pictures...
- North Korea launches powerful new missile that could hit...
- Meghan's heartbreak at the life she must leave behind to...
- Will THIS be Meghan and Harry's country love nest? Royal...
- EXCLUSIVE: Heartbreaking images show homework assignment...
- Man accidentally kills himself after taking the pin out...
- Police say they are 'aware' of claims UFC star Conor...
- Hitting the gym already! Harry is seen leaving a workout...
- Desperate hunt for three-year-old girl who vanished after...
- Ex-Coronation Street star Bruno Langley reveals he is...
- The Italian Fritzl: Woman held in dungeon for TEN YEARS -...
- Woman dumps husband after she recognized the view from...
- EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: From a Royal family fan to a Princess:...
- Man is strangled to death in front of his horrified...
- North Korea completes its most powerful missile launch...