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Rating:  - Best Camelot movie ever - bar none!
On a degree of difficulty scale this is one of the toughest movies to attempt to make. Robin Hood is another. Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn pulled it off nicely in their adaptation back in the 70's. Excalibur is about a 9 and Robin Hood about an 8, with a 10 being the toughest. Green tights and shiny armor isn't always easy. The late Heath Ledger did a remarkable job in A Knight's Tale of capturing this ideal.
Anyway, enough background and context. Excalibur is a spectacle, yet personal and intimate. If you like a good sword fight there are many staggered neatly throughout for your enjoyment. From the Lady in the Lake to King Arthur it's all good. Lancelot is perfect. Merlin - perhaps one of the toughest roles within one of the toughest films - is integral to the movie's success. Merlin in many ways is the glue of this film. As a sidenote: Nicol Williamson who plays Merlin also played Little John in "Robin and Marion" the Robin Hood movie I spoke of earlier. Nigel Terry as Arthur is sublime. When he pulls the sword from the rock and the music bridge hits if the hair on your neck doesn't stand up ... hit eject. This movie isn't for you. Helen Mirren is downright HOT and CREEPY as Morgana. It's one of those roles where in one part of the movie you're rooting for her and by the end your cheering her demise. My favorite performance is actually one that doesn't last very long. There are many fine performances and considering Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson are minor supporting actors emphasizes that this movie provides a rare and powerful cast not seen in today's movies. My personal favorite performance is that of Uther, Arthur's father. Played by a young and rough Gabe Byrne this is a raw and syrupy interpretation. I give Boorman credit for keeping this in the film. This sets the table for how lust, sex, and power will be woven throughout the story. Byrne singlehandedly gets the audience primed for an incredible ride.
And hey - a happy ending? Who knew. The end almost has a Godfather Part III feel to it. This is one of the most underrated movies of all time. I highly recommend it.
Rating:  - A Tempest in Teapot Armor
Hamy, melodramatic, gratuitously violent, plotless, self-indulgent, historically ridiculous, and over long. I've tried to watch this teapot boiler once every decade and it still remains a crushing bore. If there had been advanced video games in the early 80's it should have been one. Cannot fathom what fans see in this thing other than middle earth fever for anything, and I mean anything, that smacks of sword and sorcery. A real clunker.
Rating: - An enchanting tale of incest and crimson gore
This is Arthur as you have never imagined him, unless you imagined him as Nigel Terry in sixteenth century plate armor. If you did imagine King Arthur as Nigel Terry in plate armor, then you were spot on in your portrayal of King Arthur in this movie, Excalibur.
The sex scene at Tintagel really makes this movie. I mean, Gabriel Burn, Uther Pendragon is decked out in plate armor, and he still gets the job done. I feel sorry for the actress though, as it probably chafed her.
This is awesome, and not in a totally lame way either. It's like, you know, way cool.
Rating:  - Pay attention here -- this one is abysmal!
What a sad disappointment! This film is one notch above a mediocre Kung-fu movie absent subtitles!
I was astonished when I viewed this film -- I was expecting something "magical" (you know, since Merlin was involved and all!), but what I got was pure letdown. Please allow me to enumerate just some of the ways in which this is a bad movie:
1. The casting is awful. These people performed at the level of a student movie production, (actually, many students show much more enthusiasm than you'll see here!). None of the major characters, especially Merlin, King Arthur, and Guenevere are even adequately played. I expected the latter to be a regular man-melter (which are a-dime-a-dozen in the acting world) but she (Cherie Lunghi) was made up to look like some fuzzy-headed floozey.
2. The storyline is incoherent (and I knew the story already!) -- the screenwriters must have either been on strike or perhaps really aggravated about something.
3. The director must have thought he was producing a documentary and not a magical allegory fantasy film. I'm sad that they actually gave him film because videotape would have suited this flick better.
4. The filmscore is Boring (yes, capital "B"), where it exists, but mostly, it doesn't exist at all. There is a poorly-rendered rip-off of segments of Carl Orff's (otherwise brilliant) "Carmina Burana" which is essentially twenty-four 13th century European poems put to music. It's like they only had enough budget to pay for 1/2 an original filmscore. They didn't even learn about how NOT to make the sound of the infamous "three-legged movie horse," as individual knights gallop in, a semi-humorous caveat of old Roy Rogers and Gene Autry "B" westerns.
5. The special effects are juvenile -- that's pretty much all I need to say on this, except that if you watch it, I hope you're crazy about green artificial lighting.
6. The saddest ACTUALITY of this film: It COULD have been spectacular! Clearly, this was a high-budget, "A" film -- but no one got it right. It's as if everyone must have had a chip on their shoulder and wanted to sabotage the end product.
I fought sleep to make it to the end of the movie, forcing myself to watch it to the very last in order to give the review a fair shake. Folks, if you peruse all my reviews, you'll see that I'm VERY liberal at awarding stars but I simply cannot do that here in good conscience. This is a cheesey version of a truly great legend and it's a darn shame that this is the case.
Don't waste time or money on this mud-pumper.
Rating: - Why do people think this is good?
For a nearly five star rated movie, I am sorely confused. The acting was hands-down the worst that I've ever seen. Characters are constantly shouting when there is no need, none of the relationships seem deep or complex (and in the story, they were), and I found myself not giving a rat's tushie what happened to them. The whole search for the Grail was out of nowhere and utterly ridiculous. The battle scenes were practically a waste of time since the armor hides the character's identity (with the exception of Lancelot, whose armour is very shiny). The only reason I didn't give the movie one star is because the storyline is fairly accurate and the music and costuming is very good. Other than that, this movie is a waste of time.
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