Alex (12) is living with his single mother. In school, he stands up to his friend Bedders who is bullied by two older kids, Kaye and Lance, but figures the world cannot be changed in the long term. One night, he pulls out a sword stuck in concrete in a construction site, and it turns out to be Excalibur. Merlin, in the form of either a teenager or an older man, shows up and tells Alex that he is chosen to stop the witch Morgana because she will attack the world in four days, during the eclipse. Reluctantly, Lance and Kaye decide to yield and serve under Alex's command. When Morgana's army attacks, the whole school fights them, while Alex kills off Morgana, now turned into a semi-dragon, by cutting her head off.
An amusing modern retelling of the King Arthur myth, Joe Cornish's "The Kid Who Would Be King" is a good, but rather uninspired little flick. It uses the plot points to articulate its theme of an outsider kid overcoming bullying by turning his enemies into his allies and gaining self-respect and self-esteem by fighting against witch Morgana, which works as an escapist-therapeutic tale that intends to give a boost to the small people who want to change the world towards better. All the actors are great, yet, as a whole, "The Kid" never really seems like a truly passionate film with some genuine energy that will grip the viewers to the fullest and elevate it to something more. Everything is done correctly, but it simply lacks highlights. The most was achieved out of the double depiction of Merlin, who appears both as a daft teenager (Angus Imrie) at whom students start throwing their plastic cups at during lunch, and a wise old man (Patrick Stewart). Another nice bit is when Alex decides to prove to his mother that something not so normal is happening by ordering a hand holding Excalibur to show up in his bathtub.
Grade:++
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