The Kid Who Would Be King, review: a smart new sparkle for an old British legend
Walt Disney, Robert Bresson, John Boorman, Monty Python. You wouldn’t typically describe those four as kindred spirits, but at their nanoscopic point of overlap, you’ll find something truly rare and magical: worthwhile King Arthur films.
Adapting the British legend has been the downfall of some of cinema’s most valiant questing knights, most recently Guy Ritchie. But this scrappily engaging new take from Joe Cornish, squarely aimed at older children and younger teens, finds a sparkle in the old tale that feels timely and fresh.
Set in the present, it unfolds in a Britain both mythical and recognisable: a land of wind-stung crags and misty fells, but also chicken shops and potholes, where an average 12-year-old can be menaced by bullies during school hours, and flaming skeletons by night.
Said average 12-year-old is Alex Elliot (Louis Ashbourne Serkis, son of performance-capture maestro Andy), a pupil at a south London comprehensive who lives with his mother (a terrific Denise Gough, fresh from Colette), and heaves a sword from a concrete pile on a deserted building site one night. It’s Excalibur, of course, and its reappearance catches the eye of the evil sorceress Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson), who’s about to mount a comeback, fuelled by the gathering clouds of global unease.
So Alex must set off to Tintagel in Cornwall, blade in hand, and stop Morgana before she’s fully charged. He’s assisted by his best friend Bedders (newcomer Dean Chaumoo), a sweet-natured nerd thrilled by their mission’s Game of Thrones overtones. High fantasy via high school isn’t an obviously coherent genre mash-up, but Cornish’s script wittily meshes the two into a natty hybrid: call it A Grange of Hills.
The Arthurian parts aren’t mere references, but well-honed riffs: just as Arthur made allies of his enemies, Alex convinces two of his playground tormentors, pointedly named Lance (Tom Taylor) and Kaye (Rhianna Dorris), to join the crusade. Their guide and mentor is a young time-travelling Merlin (Angus Imrie, son of Celia), who casts enchantments via complex chains of claps, pops and finger-clicks, and with a sneeze can transform himself into an owl – and occasionally Patrick Stewart – at will, leaving clouds of twisting feathers in his wake.
It’s been a while since the release of Cornish’s directorial debut, Attack the Block – another teen-skewed genre homage, which introduced the world to John (Star Wars) Boyega, but bowed so deeply and protractedly at the altar of John Carpenter, its joints kept seizing up.
But the script for this follow-up has been rigorously beaten into shape. Structurally, it’s watertight to 100 metres, paying homage to the Amblin holy relics such as The Goonies, while weaving in some smart subversion of the Monomyth – the “hero’s journey” story template grounded in Arthurian romance and favoured by George Lucas, the Wachowskis, JK Rowling and umpteen others since.
Yet the film never finds a visual groove that’s as satisfying as its writing, and it’s hard not to wonder what a director like Edgar Wright – Cornish’s regular collaborator and a master pop-art stylist – might have done with it. Some supremely creepy tree monsters aside, the creatures largely resemble dreary escapees from a Dark Souls-like video game, while the relatively frequent battle sequences are clunkier than the suits of armour in which our four teenaged heroes are eventually obliged to dress up – decimating their already precarious street cred.
Not that The Kid Who Would Be King is trying very hard to be cool in the first place. We’re so used to fantasy films straining to please every imaginable subgroup that it’s refreshing to encounter one made entirely for kids who dream of storybooks coming alive.
Watching horse-riding fire skeletons going berserk in a school, you sense an important gap in cinema is being filled, and I’m sure my roleplay-gaming, Tolkien-loving 12-year-old self would have got a big kick out of it.
