Well Deserved Praise

recommended

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Set in a medieval setting the somewhat serious plot ends up in comedy. The costumes are quite good even though they look looted from various theatre wardrobes as they do not match at all. Some of the villains are wearing soldiers costumes while the king's guard have no uniform what so ever. The acting is pretty decent, though the main actors should have been the villains as they were the only ones who really stand out. The story feels a bit stretched towards the middle of the movie as no swordsman facing possible doom has time for taking tea, argue about hats or perform stand up comedy. Still, the filming and sound effects are pretty good. Only the opening scene looks a little fake. OK, it looks really fake but its OK as it only takes up a couple of frames. Some locations are really good but they end up in a single field with a ruin in the middle. And that is where most of the story happens.This would be a fun movie for anyone not feeling to watch anything too serious or feeling too critical.

Not the worst movie I have ever seen, but still in the same general vicinity. The King's Guard is a fumbling attempt to merge adventure and comedy. The humour often came off as really badly overacted nonsense and the action scenes were overlong and poorly choreographed. There was no grandeur in what should have been a grand adventure. It seemed as if all of the sweeping shots of wonderful vistas had been left out because they couldn't afford the extras to fill the spaces. The costuming looked hastily thrown together and this was explained by introducing the idea that the king's guardsmen were all acting undercover. It would have made as much sense if there was a scene where the king gathered his men together and said, 'Tomorrow is mufti day boys, so you can wear whatever you like.' The lack of extras/money was again shown when not very far into the movie, the narrator comes on to explain that the situation had become dire, due to an attack of overwhelming numbers of bandits and that during the fight, the allies of the king's guard had run off. The next scene shows some of the men of the king's guard pulling one of the carts that had formed part of the caravan that had been attacked…they couldn't even afford horses! The four or five thousand dollars that went into making the movie could have been used to do some good in the world, instead of stealing 92 minutes of my life.

when you can tell the actors are having fun! This movie was a real pleasure to watch. It reminded me of the original Saturday Night Live show where the actors literally lived their roles and didn't care about trying to outdo each other hoping to get noticed and move on to (supposedly) bigger things. The only exception was the character Talbert (Eric Roberts) who didn't fit in with the plain and simple fun that everyone else was having in this film. While all were enjoying their parts, he acted like he just wanted to get it over with and hammed it up every chance he got. His lines came out stiff and forced. Example: after he killed Lord Morton (Ron Perlman) and took command of the bad guys he made this awful speech trying to rally the troops. No heart in it at all. Because of him I gave it 9/10.

Hmmm, the cast first. Well, I am a big fan of red heads and Khrystyne Haje, who plays Roxanne, was the only reason I stuck with this sucker. She is as pretty now as she was back on the old American TV series "Head of the Class." The other female lead, Ashley Jones as the princess, was also a delight to watch, though no one would accuse her of being a great actress from watching this movie. Trevor St. John plays the captain assigned to guard the Princess and he acquits himself well enough. He reminds me a Cary Elwes, who was the lead in "The Princess Bride."How in the world did Ron Perlman(from "Beauty and the Beast fame") and Eric Roberts get signed to this?? I suspect Mr. Roberts had some connection to the production beyond simply appearing in the film. The credits were revealing in that Roberts had his own driver, production assistant, costumer, and make-up artist, while the rest of the cast had to share a seperate team.In fact, the blooper reel at the end was, in my opinion, also quite revealing in that almost all of the clips were of Roberts blowing lines. Almost none of the other cast were shown on the blooper real and I was left wondering whether Roberts was the only one unable to keep his lines straight or instead used his clout so that the rest of the cast just wasn't included. I wanted to see the three main female leads gaff it up a little but no luck.The script took few chances, surrounding a paper-thin plot with all the standard fairy-fantasy tale cliches. One interesting twists was that one of the King's Guard was played with some flair by a black actor (name unknown) with light homosexual overtones. He kept complaining about his pink hat with a big pink plume and about his clothes getting dirty. There wasn't really any sexual innuendo involved but quite a bit of lifestyle innuendo. It was something I hadn't seen before in this type of movie and the actor did a fair job with the script he was given. An interesting diversion...The sword-play and stunt work was pretty weak. I have a little experience with sword-play and I suspect what was shown in the movie was more a result of a limited practice schedule. I have seen much better sword handling in a variety of situations and I think the actors just needed more practice before shooting. Especially since with a movie, the editor can do a lot to make it seem more dramatic by good cutting from shot to shot.And there were a lot of shots. The filmakers did take time to get a lot of angles in the film. Clearly there was effort to do a lot of conceptual layout work before committing anything to film. It's just that what they ended up with wasn't very special. The cinematography was one of the best aspects (relatively speaking) to the film. A lot of it was shot using natural sunlight and all the actors looked good in their costumes - another bright spot in the work. It was clear that this film was shot entirely in one physical location with a cheesy-looking "ruins" serving as the focal point of action. The credits gave a big kudos to such-in-such a ranch..."The King's Guard" would make for nice family-friendly viewing for all ages but won't hold adults attention for any length of time. While there are plenty of deaths during the film there is no blood or gore of any kind so younger kids are safe with this one. Unless you are a fan of one of the cast members go rent Princess Bride.