QUEST FOR CAMELOT (1998)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

I've not read the Vera Chapman fantasy-trilogy from which QUEST FOR CAMELOT was loosely derived, but it doesn't sound like the writers of this Warner Brothers animated bomb took more than cursory tropes from the original books. 

Though as I recall advance hype for the film emphasized the gutsiness of would-be female knight Kayley, she's no Mulan (whose Disney film appeared in theaters about a month after the debut of QUEST). Because this Warner Brothers feature smacked of so many Disney-isms, I'd like to believe that its genesis was an attempt to move in on DIsney's territory with regard to presenting empowering female characters. Yet the writers don't really build up their heroine as did,say, the film MULAN that same year. Indeed, the illustration above shows Kayley holding the sword Excalibur with her battle-partner, the blind hermit Garrett, who ends up doing most of the heavy lifting in the film. Though the producers may have paid some lip service to empowerment, from here Kayley looks like the same old Disney princess.

Kayley is in many ways the epitome of the "wannabe" hero. In the film's first segment Kayley's father is killed by an evil lord named Ruber (Gary Oldman), who was trying to assassinate King Arthur himself. Ruber-- whose character is given a lot of over-ripe lines, much like Hades in Disney's HERCULES from the year previous-- is surprisingly not executed for the crime of attempting the king's life, but is simply exiled. Fatherless Kayley then spends most of her time not thirsting for the blood of her father's killer but messing around the family farm, fantasizing about becoming a knight but doing nothing whatever in the way of training.

Being a bad penny, Ruber turns up again. He employs a griffin to invade Camelot and steal Arthur's legendary sword Excalibur, though the monstrous bird is attacked by Merlin's eagle Ayden, so that the sword is lost in a dense forest below. While all this is going on, Ruber and his pawns-- who have been transformed into half-human, half-weapon entities by magic potions-- show up at Kayley's farm and announce their plan to use Kayley and her mother as cover as they infiltrate Camelot. Kayley learns that the villain's plan to acquire Excalibur has gone awry, and so she flees to the Forbidden Forest, hoping to find the sword and deliver it to its owner in Camelot-- which is perhaps the main connotation of the rather-awkward title of the film. 

While wandering about the Forbidden Forest, Kayley meets, and receives aid from, a handsome blind guy, Garrett. This young man also hoped to become a knight, but he was blinded, and though he received some encouragement in the day from Kayley's late father, Garrett still ended up dwelling in the forest, shunning human contact. Garrett also hangs around with the eagle Ayden, who spends most of the film in Garrett's company (making Merlin's status with the bird a little dubious). In fact, though Garrett can't see he shows a Daredevil-like propensity for unsighted combat, as Ruber's thugs find out when they try to overtake Kayley. In a rather confusing bit of exposition, at least part of the time Garrett seems guided by cries from the eagle, though there are a number of times when the eagle isn't present to guide Garrett, and he still moves about with no less facility.

Garrett reluctantly allies himself to Kayley's quest, and though the adventures in the forest are extremely derivative fantasy-fodder, some of the adventures are at least lively. However, neither Kayley nor Garrett are anything but standard stereotypic "good guys." Ruber's constant blatherings make him him foolish rather than sinister a la Hades, and one of his most peculiar plots-- realized in the last third of the film-- is to meld the magic sword with one of his own hands. That does seem like a rather twisted way to obtain temporal power in Merrie Old England, which wouldn't be too merry for Ruber if he ever forgot himself and scratched his ass with the wrong hand.

All of the songs are forgettable, as is most of the comic relief, though I suppose some kids with siblings might have liked the two-headed dragon Devon-and-Cornwall, whose two heads, voiced by Eric Idle and Don Rickles, constantly snipe at one another. The action toward the end is fairly rousing, but the film has no concept of archaic fantasy-magic: it's all on the level of "presto-change-o" and nothing more. Though Kayley gets her heart's wish of being able to save King Arthur-- who is almost as physically unimpressive as she is-- and eventually finds love as well with Garrett, I kept feeling like the real title ought to have been QUEST TO BITE DISNEY'S STYLE.