The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)

Writer-director Joe Cornish has, with his two features, gone out of his way to provide entertainment that touches on some great genre history while also staying very much its own thing. Indeed, comparing his movies to others can end up doing them a disservice, and give people preconceptions that I am sure he would prefer you not to have. That's how it was with Attack The Block, and that is how it now is with The Kid Who Would Be King.

It's all about a young boy named Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) who ends up pulling a sword out of a stone. That sword is obviously Excalibur, making Alex the leader that is needed to stop our world being taken over by forces of darkness (led by Morgana, played by Rebecca Ferguson). Alex needs to convince others of his leadership suitability. He has one very loyal friend (Bedders, played by Dean Chaumoo), and there's a strange new boy at school who is actually Merlin (Angus Imrie), but the three of them aren't enough to defeat the approaching baddies.

First off, I think it is very important to emphasise what this movie isn't. It's not a hilarious comedy (although it IS funny). And it's not aimed at older viewers. That doesn't mean that older viewers cannot be entertained by it, as I was. It just means that the best audience for this would be kids aged, at a guess, between 8 and 13, when they can still enjoy the fantastical elements, perhaps even believing in some of the onscreen magic, yet also appreciate the dramatic strands that serve a number of life lessons for the main characters to learn and grow from.

Now let's pin down what the movie IS. What Joe Cornish has delivered here is a movie not unlike the live-action Disney movies from the '70s and '80s. It's a more polished, and slightly less childish, effort than most of those adventures, but it's absolutely branching off from that particular cinematic family tree.

The script and direction from Cornish keeps everything in line with his ultimate aim, this is a film with the kids front and centre for about 85% of the runtime. They are the ones who know about the impending danger, they are the ones who hope to stop it. This is not a place for adults, and the rules of the battles allow for them to be handily "set aside" during the major set-pieces.

Serkis is excellent as young Alex, a boy who seizes the reworked mythology in a way that shows him hoping it will provide an answer to one major question in his life (connected to his father). Chaumoo is equally good as Bedders, and Imrie adds a vital energy and humour whenever he appears onscreen (the older version of his character is portrayed by a relative newcomer named Patrick Stewart, who also seems quite good at this acting lark). Tom Taylor and Rhianna Doris play characters who are initially antagonistic towards our hero, and they do decent work. Their journey may not ring as true as the journeys of the other characters, this is where the script slips up slightly, but Taylor and Doris do all that is asked of them. Last, but by no means least, you have two very different women making an impression in very different ways. Ferguson is an impressively determined and menacing villain, and Denise Gough is the concerned mother of Alex, doing her best to support her son while also trying to stop him from being consumed by what she thinks is a fantasy story that he has taken far too much to heart.

As long as you know what Cornish is aiming for, this has everything you could want from a piece of family entertainment. It updates a classic tale without attempting to include all of the latest trends and pop culture references, and that makes it feel both old-fashioned, in a pleasing way, and also quite refreshing. Cornish is two for two now, and I am very much looking forward to whatever he gives us next.

7/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.