Camelot

Actors:  Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, Lionel Jeffries, David Hemmings Rating:  6 out of 10, a Father’s Day gift and a film I really cherished from my youth.  Camelot was the first play I ever saw, put on by my high school drama department while I was still in Junior High.  I’d always been a huge fan of knights in shining armor stuff and this had them in spades.  I always wondered about Redgrave whom I never found attractive in the role of Guinevere.  The movie has not aged well with the sound stages obviously fake which makes this seem more theater than movie and at times just silly.  The knights seem a lot more effeminate than I remembered and Arthur absolutely prances occasionally.  Nero was a huge mistake as Lancelot as he seems to be a spaghetti western actor dumped in the middle of a bunch of British thespians, which is of course exactly what happened.  He’s clearly out of his league and it hurts the movie.  Harris and Redgrave though carry the film and are so good that you wonder what the hell Guinevere was thinking.  One of my favorite scenes in movie history is the ending where Arthur sends off the young boy to remember the dream that was Camelot.  I’m glad I now have this cherished film of my younger years in my collection but it certainly has aged, but then, so have I.
MVP:  Harris was a much better actor that I ever gave him credit for, lot of nuance in his role as Arthur