* * *

Devon: Anyway, cheer up. When we get to Camelot, we'll be kissed by the world's most beautiful women.
Cornwall: Yeah, we're a giant talking lizard with two heads. We're gonna have to beat them off with a stick.

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This is yet another Warner Brothers attempt to make a Disney musical. The WB filled it with stars in both the acting and singing roles. They got a good score, liberally sprinkled with fabulous songs by Carole Bayer Sager and David Foster. They based it on a decent novel by Vera Chapman. They shelled out the bucks for good quality animation. However, despite all this effort, all WB accomplished was to make Disney look good. Without the Mouse magic, it all falls apart.

The plot is simple. When the evil Baron Ruber (Gary Oldman) steals Excalibur from King Arthur (Pierce Brosnan), then Kayley (Jessalyn Gilsig) and Garret (Cary Elwes) set out to get it back, accompanied by Cornwall (Don Rickles) and Devon (Eric Idle), a two headed dragon. You can guess the rest.

The best parts of this movie are the songs. It includes three of the best songs I ever heard in a movie, including the incredible, The Prayer, sung by Céline Dion during the movie, and by Andrea Bocelli during the credits -- make sure you listen. This was clearly the best song of the year so, typically, it did not win the Oscar although it was nominated. It did, however, win the Golden Globe.

Unfortunately, everything else about the movie was average to below par.

The WB got an amazing array of talent to play the various roles. However, it appears they just went for the names and never actually listened to the voices. Jane Seymour sounded fabulous as Lady Juliana, Kayley's mom. Céline Dion, as her singing voice, is one of the foremost pop talents of our time. However, didn't anyone at WB notice that Seymour is English while Dion is French Canadian? Pierce Brosnan (Arthur) is Irish, which is an odd choice for an English king. Nevertheless, he has a wonderful British speaking voice, while Steve Perry (ex lead singer of Journey) has a truly incredible singing voice, but he cannot be even remotely mistaken for a Brit. Garret's voices, Cary Elwes (who can speak with an English accent) and Bryan White (who can't), have much the same problem. In fact, no one sounds even remotely like themselves when the singing starts, not even when the actor is doing both tasks. The annoying way that the movie just leaps into song at the drop of a hat without decent intros, just exacerbates the voice issue. To add to the confusion, the lip synching is below par some of the time, especially at the start of the movie. Consequently, it is hard to figure out which character is actually singing.

To add to the voice problems, we have a two-headed dragon with an English head and an American head. Sure, the role is funny, but it really sounds weird at first. Couldn't they find any more funny comedians with English accents? Perhaps they should have asked Eric Idle, I am sure he knows some. And then there is Gary Oldman as the villain, whose high-pitched, pseudo-cockney accent makes the pathetic, one-dimensional Ruber even more bizarre. He probably could have single-handedly ruined the movie, but luckily for him, there were plenty of people willing to help.

Surprisingly, even the super score has a bad effect on the rest of the movie. The characters spend so much time singing, there is precious little time left for minor things like a plot, and character development. In an apparent attempt to overcome the shortage of plot development time, most of the songs attempt to move the paper-thin plot along, and huge amounts of exposition/narration are hidden in the lyrics. Unfortunately, this helps neither the plot nor the song. The placement of the songs is awful too. Just as we have a bit of action, and you think the movie is finally going to get going, up pops another song to drag things back to a halt. They even have a song in the middle of the chase sequence. This is simply inept.

The characterization is awful too. Ruber is grotesque, Arthur is a wimp, and almost everyone else is a walk on, except for the leads -- Seymour and Gielgud are totally wasted on minor characters. Kayley and Garret are too mindless to be interesting, which leaves the dragon. Such is the talent of Idle and Rickles, that despite the accent problems, they almost pull it off. Bronson Pinchot as the evil Griffon also pulls his weight, despite far too small a role.

Even the animation does not work properly, a cardinal sin in a full length cartoon. As I mentioned, the lip synching is off a bit especially near the beginning. It's almost as if they started with different actors, and changed horses (so to speak) mid stream. At other times, the scenes lost their 3D perspective and looked flat. That's very unusual to see in a movie of this quality. Then we have green clad heroes walking through an enchanted forest for most of the movie, which adds a certain monochromatic flavor to the monotony.

Monotony! What monotony, you say. Did I forget to mention the totally predicable plot and the utterly banal dialogue? Only the dragon and the griffon get good lines, and while I must admit that the dragon's Elvis impersonation is a side-splitter, it does seem out of place in a sword and sorcery movie.

This movie is innocuous and not unpleasant. It is certainly an improvement over PBS begging. I give it one star for the movie and another just for the score. Its worst crime is that it has all the ingredients to be good, but it isn't. It is an okay way to spend 90 minutes and small children might even find it exciting.

I picked up the Special Edition of Quest for Camelot in the $3.99 bin at Wal-Mart, so don't waste money renting it. The extras on the disk are few and mostly pathetic -- not even a good video of The Prayer. If this is "Special", I can only wonder how unbelievably sparse the Original Edition must have been.

* * *

Quest for Camelot (1998)

Directed by Frederik Du Chau

Written by:
Vera Chapman (novel The King's Damosel)

Screenplay:
Kirk De Micco, William Schifrin, Jacqueline Feather and David Seidler.

Cast:
Jessalyn Gilsig... Kayley
Andrea Corr... Kayley (singing)
Cary Elwes... Garrett
Bryan White... Garrett (singing)
Gary Oldman... Baron Ruber
Don Rickles... Cornwall, Two-Headed Dragon
Eric Idle... Devon, Two-Headed Dragon
Jane Seymour... Lady Juliana
Céline Dion... Lady Juliana (singing)
Pierce Brosnan... King Arthur
Steve Perry... King Arthur (singing)
John Gielgud... Merlin
Bronson Pinchot... The Griffin
Jaleel White... Bladebeak
Gabriel Byrne... Sir Lionel


Songs by:
Carole Bayer Sager and David Foster

Special mention:
Andrea Bocelli sings "The Prayer" in the credits.



Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up to Age 4