Review of Excalibur (1981) by Donald W — 09 Aug 2009

This is a retelling of the King Arthur legend. It's set in the Dark Ages and the mood and atmosphere of the movie is good but the dialogue is pompous and everyone yells at each other. People must have been hard of hearing in the Dark Ages.

The first half of the movie has some good battle scenes but the second half is all mood and atmosphere and pompous dialogue. All the knights seem to wear plate armor all the time even though in the real dark ages knights wore chain mail and only in battle.

Merlin tries to say something funny every once in a while but it's like listening to a Shakespeare play, the language gets in the way. Maybe they took the dialogue from the literature. I guess you would have to take a trip to the library to find out.

There are tons of books written based on the King Arthur legend and this movie tries to cram too much of it into one movie.