Eight years ago, director Joe Cornish released the sci-fi film Attack the Block. The film came and went with positive reviews but little fanfare at the time, going on to become a cult classic later on. Cornish has since remained dormant, other than co-writing the original draft of Ant-Man with Edgar Wright. However, he has finally returned with his second feature, The Kid Who Would Be King. A family-friendly film, this was a much different pace than his graphic, R-rated sci-fi romp, though this still maintained a solid level of fun, if not to the same extent as Attack the Block.
The film follows Alex, a young boy who gets bullied at school and finds solace in reading a book his father left him chronicling the tales of King Arthur. One night, Alex - while on the run from two bullies - hides in a construction site where he finds Excalibur buried in the rubble, and pulls it out, and in turn leading him on a quest to defeat the evil enchantress Morgan le Fay. Along with his best friend Bedders, he forms an alliance with his two bullies - Lance and Kay - to form a miniature version of the Knights of the Round Table, and are accompanied by the wizard Merlin himself, disguised as a fellow teenager.
A lot of this seems like pretty familiar territory, with the typical young adult/family movie trope of having a “chosen one” archetype who holds the power to save the world and stop the one, true evil. We’ve seen this in just about every major fantasy franchise these last 10-20 years, so we can pretty much call out where this movie is headed pretty early on. And a lot of the time, the movie itself seems to even be aware with the direction its headed - even directly acknowledging these tropes from time to time - and tries to have a little bit of fun with it, when it can.
The main issue this movie seemed to struggle with, though, is the fact that despite being self-aware and meta at times, it still very much embodied the type of cliched family films it seemed to think it was above. The film was often torn between being a parody of young adult fantasy features, yet still being just another standard entry into the genre. For every joke it made where it tried to give us a dose of reality (at least as best it could, given the fact this is about sorcerers and enchantresses), it would then just go on and do the thing it joked about anyway. It sometimes very much felt like “one step forward, two steps back.”
Which is a shame because when this movie hit its mark, it did so well. Some of the jokes are on point, where it would sometimes point out the ridiculousness of certain scenarios in these sort of “chosen one” style of fantasy films. There was a nice level of sarcastic wit that would go with this from time to time. The funnier moments without a doubt stemmed from Angus Imrie, who portrays the teenage disguise of Merlin. He was easily the most entertaining character to watch, with his animated movement and exaggerated delivery. He carried around a great deal of confidence and passion with him that made for some really fun moments where he’s either seemingly acting foolish or embarrassing one of the other main characters, but he clearly has so much conviction that he’s oblivious to everything else around him and only cares about the subject of his speech. He’s never portrayed as ignorant, but he’s so zoned in on his task that his little regard for everything else around him made for some of the movie’s best laughs.
While Merlin was easily the best-written character in this movie, the rest of the characters were also fairly solid too, for the most part. Again, they all embody some sort of stock character that we’ve seen in plenty other family movies, but at least they’re handled a bit better, for what they are. Alex, played by Louis Ashbourne Serkis (son of Andy), goes through a lot of the same hardships as Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and any other big sci-fi or fantasy protagonist (a point he directly acknowledges at one point). He only has one parent, only one friend, and isn’t popular. He goes on his quest much to the chagrin of his mother who doesn’t believe him. It’s all material we’ve seen before.
But what I do applaud is that the movie doesn’t approach him in such a heavy-handed manner. He still has a fairly lively personality and manages to even crack some good jokes from time to time, to make him a likable enough protagonist. Even when we see scenes of him getting bullied, we feel bad for him, but the movie doesn’t manipulate us with a sappy speech. If anything, we like this character more for how much he tries brushing things off at times after his conflict is resolved for the moment. He’ll stand up to his bullies, end the conflict for the time being, and just tries to move on. That’s a very respectable character trait for someone who otherwise falls in line with the usual tropes for young fantasy protagonists.
Even how the film handles the bullies is fairly respectable. As stated, they do form an alliance with Alex, but what’s nice is how they don’t immediately just become best friends and forget the fact that they had their issues in the past. There’s still a solid amount of tension among the gang for the film’s first half, even when they stick together, fighting off Morgana’s demons. Even though they save each other’s lives at times, they still don’t exactly get along for a bit. It actually takes them talking it out in order for them to truly be on the same side, which is great because that’s essentially how real human beings resolve their conflicts. And what’s great about this too is that we don’t get some contrived backstories about the two bullies that rope us into suddenly feeling bad for them. They only have a couple of lines to sum their side of the story about, but they manage to hit the nail on the head brilliantly. We get a lot of emotion from just one or two sentences, and I think that’s actually storytelling at its finest, especially in the world of film.
Despite all these positive remarks, this film has one other big issue and that’s its villain. This has to be one of the most poorly-developed antagonists I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time. Rebecca Ferguson, who portrays Morgan le Fay, is given extremely little to do here. The whole point of her character is that she doesn’t actually return to Earth until the solar eclipse happens and we spend the entire movie hyping her up as Alex and his knights go through their training to defeat her. We see very little of her until the third act.
And when we do see her, there’s nothing even remotely interesting about her. Whereas the protagonists have a little bit of self-awareness with how standard of a plot this may be, the antagonist is played completely straightforward and it’s a total failure. Morgan le Fay is a completely one-dimensional character who essentially just wants to destroy the world and nothing more. She says nothing interesting nor does she do anything interesting. I honestly couldn’t name you one thing she does in the entire movie, that’s how totally non-engaging she is. Antagonists are just as important as protagonists, and if a film has an antagonist with no clear motivation, or at least a well-developed personality, they tend to be nothing more than a stereotype.
On another note, Patrick Stewart portrays the adult version of Merlin, sporadically appearing from time to time when Merlin has an absolute need to transform. While it’s always great to see Patrick Stewart, he’s another one who’s not given much to do here. While the young Merlin is an absolute blast, old Merlin is fairly dull. He has a couple of moments here and there where he belts out a powerful line with some gusto. But for the most part, he’ll appear just to give some fairly generic advice to the other protagonists before disappearing. This is extremely disappointing, as Stewart is the type of actor who would easily have a lot of fun with the role if he was given the freedom to do so. But his appearances are nothing more than a glorified cameo altogether and he leaves much less of an impact than his younger counterpart.
While The Kid Who Would Be King is a problematic movie, the positives actually do outweigh the negatives, if only by just so much. It ventures mostly into pretty safe territory, and is something that children will definitely enjoy much more than adults. But at least it knows for the most part what type of movie it is, and manages to have a sense of humor about it. So the ride isn’t as bad as you think it would be for something that stays mostly in its comfort zone. Every January - notoriously known as the dumping ground for bad movies - there’s always one movie each year that shines above the rest, even if it’s only by just a bit, and this year, it’s The Kid Who Would Be King.
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