There’s a lot you can do with Arthurian myth, from the gory opera of Excalibur, to the faux-historical grit of Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 King Arthur, to Guy Ritchie’s bizarre mix of high fantasy and geezer swagger in his 2017 misfire of the same name. Arthur & Merlin feels like a blend of all three, though was made on a budget that we suspect wouldn’t have covered Ritchie’s lunch expenses, and lacks the vision, wit or inventiveness to rise above its limitations.
Lore-wise, it’s a meaningless hotchpotch of a story which doesn’t know where to start (Arthur and Lancelot, already old buddies, find Guinevere in a cave), isn’t sure how to end (with a lacklustre scrap in a barely furnished throne room) and struggles to join all the sketchy dots that lie in-between. The device of Arthur’s foreign adventures — fighting the Romans, oddly — and his weak, royal snideness of a son wrecking the country while he’s away is more reminiscent of the Robin Hood legend’s take on Richard I and Prince John. Meanwhile, details like Arthur’s loss of Excalibur, or the root of his loss of faith in his ability to rule — apparently crucial to this version of the character — are never explored.
As the bushy-bearded monarch, Richard Short (from TV’s Mary Kills People) wrestles manfully with the thin material, but there is an air of perpetual constipation to his performance. You feel less inclined to sympathise with him than wish he’d take some laxatives.
For the most part, the film is a matter of Short and his rag-tag gaggle of scowling, hard-nut knights stomping around the same bit of Welsh woodland and barking in cod Olde English, while Merlin (played by Richard Brake, aka Joe Chill from Batman Begins) pops up in two scenes — with a literal “pop”, weirdly, the second time — to talk bollocks for a few minutes before trotting off to wherever it is useless wizards like to hang out. Why this title character does so little is just one of the film’s many frustrating mysteries, characteristic of the entire endeavour’s ultimate pointlessness. To quote another take on Arthurian myth to which this film bears some (unintentional) resemblance: “Let’s not go to Camelot. ’Tis a silly place.”