Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

GazerRise Fantastic!

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

TownRootGuy Redgrave does a fine job but her character is despicable from start to finish so it's hard to say much good about her performance because she sells it so well. Nero is much the same, Lancelot goes from unlikable to dastardly. Both have great and very telling songs, though. In addition, Lancelot has a scene where he speaks to what it's like to be a fanatic that is incredibly succinct and yet profound. As for Harris, well, he's never been more engaging. You can't help but like and feel for Arthur. But can he sing? I've always thought so and so did many others when his pop song, "MacArthur Park", went to #2 in the US. This has an outstanding cast, fantastic tunes AND the magic is in how funny someone's personal tragedy can be. The music, Harris' charisma and Lancelot's comments on fanaticism make this one of my favorite movies. I've been watching it for four decades and can still watch it every couple of years.

Bill Slocum When is a motion picture all picture and no motion? To have the answer, see this three-hour collection of close-ups and costumes, a musical ponderously directed by Josh Logan starring three actors who can't sing.In England's early medieval period, King Arthur (Richard Harris) and his new bride Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave) bring together the flower of knighthood to establish a new golden era of "might for right." But Arthur's most powerful ally, Lancelot (Franco Nero) becomes the undoing of the realm when he and Guenevere begin a passionate, painful affair."How did I blunder into this agonizing absurdity?" is the question Arthur poses in his opening scene. It starts with a musical where the music is not so much performed as presented, shot with abrupt jump cuts and suffocating close-ups that zero right up the noses of the three stars.With three hours, and the Excalibur legend to play with, you would think there is a lot of story here. But there isn't. For ninety minutes, about the same screen time it took Rick and Ilsa to make their plans or Charles Foster Kane to leave his wife, you get a pair of mistaken-identity cute meets and a pointless joust which somehow prompts the previously distant Gen and Lance to fall in love. The next 90 minutes are for watching everything fall apart.Logan indulged his actors famously on set, even allowing Harris to flash Redgrave for cheap laughs and letting Redgrave mess with the Alan Jay Lerner lyrics. Despite its reputation, this isn't Lerner and partner Frederick Loewe's best score; yet the movie makes matters worse by overusing the strings and robbing the songs of any pull. The title song should be a thrusting, raucous number; it's Muzak here.In a promotional show made at the time of the film's release, Logan emphasizes the word "texture" a lot. There is a lot of this on display, what with its touted "45 sets and 3,500 costumes." The costumes look okay; the sets decked out like Christmas trees in "GoodFellas." But where's the story?The Arthur legend is a sprawling epic; to fit something digestible into even three hours you have to make choices. Here, Logan and the production team seemed to decide to zero in on the three main characters and ignore everyone else, except for cheap comic relief from Lionel Jeffries as Pellinore, a king who can't remember where his kingdom is; and David Hemmings as sly and slinky Mordred, the bad guy of the piece. Neither manage to do more than annoy.Of the principals, Harris and Redgrave talk-sing while Nero is dubbed. Nero has negative comic presence, rendering his opening number "C'est Moi" inert; Redgrave is cool and unlikable throughout. Only Harris has a pulse, but as his character is all over the map his energy becomes a weight as the story flips around. Nothing is really established about what makes his Camelot special; the only time I noticed the Round Table was when a horse galloped across it. If you want to celebrate the notion of a land dedicated to the principle people matter, why undercut it by ignoring everyone but the king and his two favorite subjects? It's reflective of the sort of star service Logan made his career; the result is even worse than usual for him.

mark.waltz When a show creates as much hype as Lerner and Lowe's "Camelot" did back in 1960, making the movie version of it is going to be a difficult task. Everybody is going to judge whoever is cast, especially if it isn't the original stars. By 1967, Richard Burton was one of the most successful movie actors in the world, yet somehow he was passed up (or passed up himself) the movie version of the hit show. Julie Andrews had gone on to screen success after loosing out on the movie version of "My Fair Lady", and Jack Warner passed her by here, although she too may have been better in the stage version than she could have been in the very darkened film version.If you don't have Richard Burton or Julie Andrews, then who to cast. Richard Harris had achieved a great reputation as a British actor of note, and so he got the role of King Arthur. A new face to American audiences (Vanessa Redgrave) had been tinkering around the British stage, yet had achieved some film success by the time this went in front of the cameras. Still, she was a bit of a novice, if not much of a singer, so the risk was there, yet Jack Warner was willing to take it, as this was going to be his last personal contribution to the world of the movie musical.Watching the movie version of "Camelot" is almost like watching a BBC version of a classic novel. Gone is the American lightheartedness, and in is the actual darkness of the real story. The early Britains lived in a mostly uncivilized world. They weren't quite England yet, and the first Kings ruled territories, not the entire island. So when one King came along that could bring the Britains together, he longed for a world of peace, and with it, the Knights of the Round Table. Where then is his queen? Guenevere comes along to marry the man she has never met, and while there is definite affection between them, is it actually love? That love is tested by the arrival of a French hero named Lancelot (the handsome Frano Nero) who longs to be the man by King Arthur's side. When he slips and ends up in Queen Guenevere's bed, the stage is set for tragedy, but Arthur is determined to keep the round table from cracking, even if his evil nephew Mordred (who seems to be a Caligula clone) is determined to make sure it does.Musically, "Camelot" is just as light and airy as it was on Broadway, but the darkened photography and sinister intentions of various characters remind us that this is not musical comedy. Redgrave and Harris take the roles much more serious than Andrews and Burton did on Broadway, utilizing humor only in a few moments, but being much more solemn than Burton and Andrews seemed to be on the original cast album. This takes "Camelot" into a more realistic mode, and there, the production team made a very wise decision. Stage productions of "Camelot" ever since them have focused more on the darkness of the story, including one I saw on a national tour in the mid 1980's where an aged Harris repeated his role and seemed far removed from the romantic figure he plays here.Of course, a "white elephant" like "Camelot" can loose money easily, and it took a lot of money to make this epic like musical. Every detail going into this movie was made to appear authentic, and this makes for an attractive, if sometimes depressing film, because you know that this situation won't end happily for anybody. So unlike "My Fair Lady" or "The Sound of Music" which have definite conclusions, "Camelot" has to end on a note of "this ain't over 'till it's over", and history shows that the three people here whom the audience empathizes with did not end up with joyous finales either.

donwc1996 This film is positively dreadful. In fact, it's so bad I actually started laughing as I watched it wondering how any studio executive could sit in his luxurious private screening room and not groan at how utterly awful this film is. Where does one even begin? Well, let's start with the story of the Camelot legend. Gee, folks, it's about adultery. How modern! Just what I want to see - adultery - as if there isn't enough unfaithfulness in the movies we have to get it in what is supposed to be a mythical legend. But it gets even worse. The Queen falls for a Knight and to hide her lust for him she arranges to have him dispatched in a jostling match. Nice girl! Gee, with women like that who needs enemies? And this girl is supposed to be a heroine! Oh dear, what happened to true fair maidens like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music or Debbie Reynolds in Singing in the Rain?