Film reviews: King Arthur and Snatched

KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD (12A, 126mins)

Director: Guy Ritchie

Stars: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Eric Bana, Aidan Gillan

Was he telling a dark family saga or a cheeky Arthurian romp? 

Judging by the manically confused result, I’d say he never worked it out. The picture is a bit of everything and not in a good way; an Arthurian cockney geezer Dickensian fantasy romp revenge thriller might cover it, in thrall to Gladiator and Robin Hood with a touch of Monty Python.

Oddly, what it really has very little to do with is King Arthur himself. And it bears no comparison to John Boorman’s dreamy Excalibur, which Hunnam cites as a childhood favourite (ouch, he must be disappointed with this). 

Ritchie’s film has no appreciation for the main characters and their history – Merlin just gets a name check – or for the mystical beauty and grandeur of the story with its origins in England’s pagan tradition. 

It’s just a brash, messy and overblown blockbuster that uses the legend of Arthur as a marketing hook for a blokey tale of medieval feuding. 

Remarkably grey and ugly to look at, there is nothing remotely magical or picturesque about this Arthurian world. The strange creatures that appear, in particular a giant snake at the climax, play like CGI-overkill to keep the audience awake rather than manifestations of a mystical universe. 

Not even a chiselled David Beckham can offer relief from the relentlessly grim surroundings. 

In fact the inclusion of the football star, at a crucial moment in the story (when Arthur attempts to extract the sword from the stone, no less) speaks volumes of Ritchie’s flippant disregard for the source material and confusion over tone. 

Cheesy gags and male banter sit awkwardly alongside sombre personal drama, which Hunnam tries valiantly to navigate and succeeds more than you might expect. The real problem lies in the storytelling and Ritchie’s restless direction, which manages to be both frenetic and tediously slow. 

A rushed, confusing, prologue establishes the feud over the throne at the story’s heart: Arthur’s wicked uncle Vortigern (Jude Law) kills Arthur’s father, the rightful king, Uther (Eric Bana) and baby Arthur is spirited away.

Gladiator-like, the grown-up Arthur is on a mission of personal vengeance but only after he and we spend an age ascertaining the true facts of his childhood; raised in a brothel on London Bridge he has no idea of his mythic heritage until he pulls the sword from the stone – much to his amazement – and becomes the Big Hope for a group of rebels.

Recalling Monty Python’s Life Of Brian, Arthur insists he is not the Messiah but is gradually forced to accept his special status and powers (the sword can lay waste to entire armies, it seems) and goes “mano a mano” with Vortigern, played by a clearly bored Law.

The problem with Ritchie’s over-caffeinated directorial style is that it isn’t allied to any coherent thematic vision or substance. That’s fine if you’ve got a clever, surprising, plot as in Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and in Snatch. But it is pretty redundant in a tale that has to capture the heart and imagination. 

By avoiding anything resembling true emotion (weirdly there is no romance at all), Ritchie has stripped the legend of all myth and mystique. You might as well call him King Geezer. 

Hunnam is an appealing leading man, buff and good natured, if not quite charismatic and he ably navigates the swerves in mood and tone. It’s possible, given a sequel, he and Ritchie could have found their feet with what was clearly intended as a franchise. 

After this inauspicious beginning and its calamitous performance at the box office in America, where it flopped last weekend, there is more chance of me finding the Holy Grail than of Guy Ritchie making a sequel. 

SNATCHED (15, 90mins)

Director: Jonathan Levine

Stars: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn

What went wrong with Snatched? Goldie Hawn came out of a self-imposed 15-year retirement to play Amy Schumer’s mother in the caper comedy about a dysfunctional mother-daughter who are kidnapped while on holiday in Ecuador. 

The former screen queen of ditz coupled with the poster girl for slobby chaos and self-centredness (as personified in Schumer’s hit Trainwreck) should be a winning combination; old-school ditzy blonde coupled with bullish, take-no-prisoners modern woman. 

Unfortunately, the opportunity for any perceptive or fun battle of the generations is squandered by a generic screenplay that aims for the broadest of laughs and mostly misses by a mile. 

Tellingly, the best jokes all come in the opening 10 to 15 minutes before the action shifts to South America, an indication that both women are much funnier and more at home in their natural habitat, navigating dead-end jobs and lousy boyfriends (in the case of Schumer’s Emily) and Facebook and widowhood (in the case of Hawn’s Linda).

Emily persuades her mother to accompany her on holiday after being dumped by her boyfriend and unable to get her money back (“help me put the fun in non-refundable” she says, in the film’s best line.)

Thereafter the story becomes a tired and irrelevant caper with nothing to say about relationships and which displays some ugly prejudices against another culture. 

As mother and daughter are kidnapped by a Colombian gang in a pretty lame and unconvincing attempt to extort cash, there is little in the way of suspense or intrigue. 

Worst of all it just isn’t funny, despite hearty efforts by both leads. 

Perhaps the nadir is the sight of the talented – Joan Cusack and Wanda Sykes – in thankless supporting roles.

VERDICT: 2/5