It’s been a long time since I saw a kid-centric adventure movie that was not mostly animated. The Kid Who Would Be King at times brought me back to the early 1990s when seemingly every other movie was about a kid going on some adventure, like Home Alone, or A Kid In King Arthur’s Court (yes, that’s Daniel Craig and Kate Winset!). Apparently we were overdue for middle schoolers learning about King Arthur; hey at least they got the country right this time.
The Kid Who Would Be King takes place in middle school in London. Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) is one of those picked upon kids who has a heart of gold: we see this early on when he helps his best friend Bedders (Dean Chaumoo) from getting beat up by 2 older bullies: Lance (Tom Taylor) and Kaye (Rhianna Doris). Fleeing for his own life, Alex finds a sword in a stone in an abandoned building development, and pulls it out, finding out it is THE Excalibur of legend. However, excavating the sword means Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson) rises from her slumber, to retrieve the sword during a solar eclipse 4 days later. Alex, Bedders, and his “knights” must go on a quest to learn to become knights, and defeat Morgana, aided along the way by Merlin (Angus Imrie/Patrick Stewart).
There was a show on Fox in the US called Sleepy Hollow, that derived a lot of fun by reimagining the American Revolution through the eyes of a supernatural creature war. The Kid Who Would Be King is at its best when it modernizes King Arthur’s story. The biggest beneficiary is Merlin (partially helped by being played by the two most charismatic actors in the cast), who runs around out of time confusing the hell out of modern kids. Merlin has a revitalizing potion that uses things like turtle poop or rat piss…which can all be found at a really crappy chicken restaurant in London. He teaches the magically curious Bedders REAL magic to impress kids at school, uses Stonhenge in fun ways that shock the tour guides. You get the idea: amusing and clever. The kids stuff carries the same light enjoyment. I was personally a fan of the updated horses, the spin on the round table, and what constitutes a “lake” for the Lady of the Lake. When the movie keeps things light and fun, The Kid Who Would Be King stands alongside all the great kids movies of yesteryear.
Maybe it’s because I’m a cynical world weary adult now, but the movie’s story was a tad too simple to keep my attention. Movies designed for kids don’t always have to have simple themes. Director Joe Cornish knows this: his Attack the Block is a simple story with deep deep stuff going on. The Kid Who Would Be King tells you the code of chivalry and all the rules that must be followed. If this movie were smarter, we would have seen pieces of the code conflict with one another, a deep but tough lesson for a kid; however, here we clearly see when the code is going to be broken. Plus, the giant adventure that takes up maybe 30-40 minutes of running time has a “twist” that most kids will probably see coming, let alone adults, rendering it basically filler. Thankfully the big fights are pretty fun and have a message of working together and learning to become friends, no problem’s there. However, with so much of the filler letting your mind wander, you start poking holes in the movie, like does Alex realize when he’s using his students as an army some of them might die in the fight? This is a PG movie, so that’s not going to happen but because of the story’s failing that’s where my mind was instead of focused on the fun battle about to happen.
In general, nostalgia will help make The Kid Who Would Be King satisfying. It’s fun seeing a kids adventure where kids learn something valuable and become heroes. I vote we go to Germany next, where we can use those terrifying Grimm tales to scare the bejeezus out of every 8-12 year old. Why would the Grimms do that to those poor, innocent kids wanting a simple bedtime story?