Kid lacks debut’s swagger
The Kid Who Would Be King (PG, 120 mins) Directed by Joe Cornish Reviewed by
T★★★1⁄2
hinking about it now, neither under nor overwhelmed by Joe Cornish’s The Kid Who Would Be King, I’m kind of surprised no one had hit on the idea of retelling the legend of
King Arthur and his knights in a present-day setting before.
Or, to be more accurate maybe, adapting T H White’s much-loved The Once and Future King ,to which The Kid owes most of its plot points.
The Kid is set in and around a pretty safe and comfortable school in suburban London, where the worst the bullies threaten is to push you in a puddle and perhaps steal your lunch money.
Stumbling into a building site while escaping said bullies, young Alex (why not Arthur?) encounters an ancient sword improbably wedged into a lump of concrete foundation. And from that point on, the script of The Kid Who Would Be King pretty much writes itself.
Lead Louis Ashbourne Serkis (son of Andy) does well enough as Alex, but is hampered by a script that never really lets the character be much more than plucky and wholesome. Next to Serkis, Angus Imrie – in a film debut – does enough as young Merlin to suggest we will see a lot more of him soon. Patrick Stewart is his usual twinkly self as the older wizard.
But the real scene stealer here might be Rhianna Dorris (Secret Life of Boys). Dorris makes the absolute most of a sidekick role, in a way that made me wish she had been cast as the Arthur here. That might have been enough to kick this likeable but mostly bloodless film into a brighter orbit. Still, if I were 9 years old, it might just have been the best film I’d seen all week.