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Quest For Camelot

1998, Movie, G, 86 mins

Quest For Camelot: Review

QUEST FOR CAMELOT
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Cobbled together from bits of pretty much any recent animated feature you'd care to mention, this competent but derivative pretender to the Disney throne will delight those too young to spell deja vu, let alone be bothered by it. The story is a mishmash of Arthurian legends: The magical sword Excalibur bestows the power to rule Camelot, and when it's snatched by evil knight Ruber (Gary Oldman), a feisty young girl named Kayley (Jessalyn Gilsig) sets off to find it. The mission is also a personal one: Ruber killed Kayley's father and has kidnapped her mother. Kayley must journey deep into the mysterious Forbidden Forest, where she meets handsome, blind recluse Garret (Carey Elwes) and a friendly two-headed dragon (Eric Idle and Don Rickles): Together they save Camelot from the forces of darkness. All the tried and true elements that made THE LION KING, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and ANASTASIA such successes are here: a spunky heroine whose quasi-feminist values are balanced by her typically "female" faults (she's duty-bound to the memory of her father and she talks too much); a swishy super-villain whose English accent drips decadence; a couple of pop-culture savvy sidekicks whose frame of reference ranges from Sonny and Cher to TAXI DRIVER; and a soaring, Oscar-ready soundtrack. There are a few inspired set-pieces -- Ruber's creation of a mechanical army is really quite something -- and the score by David Foster and Carol Bayer Sager is generally fine. But overall, this is a bloodless entry into an already highly formulaic genre. And so much potential is wasted: Merlin (John Gielgud) hardly figures in the plot, Idle and Rickles' jokes are stale, and the fabled Camelot looks disappointingly like something out of The Flintstones. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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