I am fully willing to admit that when I was young, I played Dungeons and Dragons. I have always been intrigued by that mystical world of warriors and wizards and have wondered what it would be like to live in that kind of fantasy world, intertwined with heroes from medieval times whose validity has been debated over the centuries, but what if you were part of that lineage?
“The Kid Who Would Be King” is the latest film directed by Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) and stars Louis Ashbourne Serkis (Taboo), Rebecca Ferguson (The Greatest Showman), Tom Taylor (The Dark Tower), Patrick Stewart (X-Men), Denise Gough (Colette), Rhianna Dorris (The Secret Life of Boys), and Angus Imrie (Kingdom). In modern day Great Britain, Alex (Serkis) is a high school student that is not the most popular and spends most of his time with his best friend Bedders (Dean Chaumoo) and avoiding bullies Lance (Taylor) and Kaye (Dorris). One day while running from the older kids, Alex comes across a sword in a pillar inside a construction site that he finds out is the mythical Excalibur, and just in time as King Arthur’s old enemy, Morgana (Ferguson) is about to be released from her prison in the underworld to try to take over our real while Alex is helped out by Merlin (Imrie and Stewart) as the four kids on the adventure of a lifetime to try to stop Morgana and save the world.
This film has some wonderful nature shots and shows off Great Britain well along with some CGI that works itself in nicely. The cast is fine but are no performances that blew me away, especially given the fact that Stewart is only in the film for about five to ten minutes. I was really into the first half of “The Boy Who Would be King,” but after that it seemed to just keep extending itself which is where I fell of. The build-up and execution of the big battle scene at the end alone went on way too long, and for a film is over two hours, there is a lot of fat that could have been trimmed. There are some dark themes that were a bit more so than they should have had for their audiences, and with all of that I am barely recommending this film as seeing it on cable.