The Black Knight (PG, selected cinemas)
Wasted opportunity
Mark Steyn
Whatever the merits of Mark Twain's original (from 1889), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is mainly useful to movie studios as a vehicle for whoever's in need of one. The plot — latter-day New Englander finds himself in Camelot — is merely an excuse to milk every last drop out of the joke of anachronism. All timetravel comedies rely on this principle, but for some reason there's something about Arthurian England that seems especially suited to it — 'The knights are drawing in', 'Where have you stashed the lute?'. etc. Even Lerner and Loewe's loftier Camelot
couldn't bring itself to eschew gags about 'knight school'.
So, as the years go by, mediaeval England stays the same and only the contemporary jokes change. In 1931, it was cowboy humourist Will Rogers wandering through the royal court making a lot of dated social observations. A little of Will Rogers goes a long way with me, and, indeed, he's best known these days as the man for whom was named the Will Rogers Park in Los Angeles, scene of George Michael's unintended rendezvous with the LAPD. Rogers's catchphrase was 'I never met a man I didn't like', and evidently most patrons of that men's room feel the same. But I digress. The Rogers version remains the best and, as he ran into Maureen O'Sullivan and Myrna Loy at King Arthur's court, that alone makes it worth the trip. In the 1949 remake, it was Bing Crosby and beefy Rhonda Fleming, and you couldn't ask for a greater contrast: the caustic wit vanishes, and what's left is an amiably sleepy Crosby vehicle using nothing of Twain but the title. Bing's version is summed up by his affable song with William Bendix and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. 'We're Busy Doing Nothing'.
And now we have The Black Knight, which keeps itself extremely busy doing nothing at all. This time round it's a vehicle for Martin Lawrence, who's black and so the joke is now 'A South Central Brother in Merrie Olde England'. Actually, even the black take on the plot isn't new: there was a TV movie five or six years ago with Keshia Knight Pulliam (from The Cosby Show) as a black suburban adolescent saving the throne of England. But that wasn't quite as ruthless about promoting its star as this version is. Black comics are pretty much the only guys in Hollywood who get vehicles these days — that's to say, films which are made for no other reason than to show them off: there's no importance attached to narrative or locale or direction, and the supporting cast is just there for the star to bounce quips and double-takes off.
So meet Jamal Walker (Lawrence), a guy who works at a broken-down mediaeval theme park in Los Angeles that's about to be put out of business by the new, state-ofthe-art 'Castle World'. One morning, Jamal is cleaning the moat, when he falls in and comes round in a strange land where the peasants are unusually convincing. Naturally, he assumes it's Castle World. Asked where he's from, he says Florence and Normandie, which is an LA intersection but here causes him to be mistaken for a Moorish emissary of the Duke of Normandy. 'What news from Normandy?' asks the King. 'A couple of drive-bys. Same old same old,' says Jamal.
The Florence and Normandie joke is about as near to any real effort as the several screenwriters put in. They are, for the record, Darryl J. Quarles, Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow. One Swallow doesn't make a bummer: for that you need to team him with a couple of other fellows.
Anyway, it seems Jamal is in England during the reign of King Leo, who was on the throne in 1328 apparently. Lawrence works hard — lots of mugging, more Jerry Lewis than Bob Hope, which would be closer to the territory he's after. Lawrence is likeable, but the script leaves him beached, and ancient old England is an historical straight man he doesn't quite have the punchlines for. He reacts to most situations by saying either (a) 'Oh, shit!' or (b) 'C'mon, man, that ain't no way to treat a brother.' Eventually, his mode of discourse is adapted by the locals: `No shit,' he says. 'I shit you not,' insists Victoria, a nubile Nubian to whom he has taken a fancy. Victoria is an unusual name for a 14th-century Nubian servant, but not in a movie where the period detail is off by the best part of a millennium much of the time.
Oscar-winning Tom Wilkinson and chums provide the under-utilised Brit muscle, though the supporting honours go to Vincent Regan's hammily seething Sir Percival. The high spot ought to be the moment when Jamal is asked to dance at a royal banquet, but finds the rebecs and lutes a little squaresville and so transforms them into an acoustic funk ensemble to perform Sly and the Family Stone's 'Dance To The Music' — or, as the courtiers sing, 'Dahnce To The Music'. It's funny, but it's not that funny, and, when you think of what, say, Jim Carrey might have done with it, it seems like just another wasted opportunity. But by now Jamal has decided it's his duty to spur the peasants to revolt and after a stirring eve-of-battle speech — 'Ask not what your fiefdom can do for you, ask what you can do for your fiefdom' — the gags pretty much dry up. As the King observes of Jamal's court jester routine, 'You have to admire him. It's no longer funny, but he refuses to give up.'
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