Prince Valiant (1997)

Director:

Anthony Hickox

Writers (WGA):

Hal Foster (comic strip)
Michael Frost Beckner (story)

Release Date:

24 July 1997 (Germany)

Genre:

Adventure | Fantasy

Tagline:

He who holds the sword, rules the world.

Plot:

In a time now lost in the mists of memory, the great King Arthur rules in the legendary citadel that is Camelot...

Plot Keywords:

Princess | Prince | King Arthur | King | Camelot

Cast

Stephen Moyer	...	Prince Valiant
Katherine Heigl	...	Princess Ilene
Thomas Kretschmann	...	Thagnar
Edward Fox	...	King Arthur
Udo Kier	...	Sligon
Joanna Lumley	...	Morgan Le Fey
Ron Perlman	...	Boltar
Warwick Davis	...	Pechet
Gavan O'Herlihy	...	King Thane
Ben Pullen	...	Prince Arn
Walter Gotell	...	Erik the Old
Anthony Hickox	...	Prince Gawain
Zach Galligan	...	Sir Kay
Hamish Campbell-Robertson	...	Sir Ector
Marcus Schenkenberg	...	Tiny

Also Known As:

Prinz Eisenherz (Germany)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for medieval action violence.

Runtime:

91 min | Japan:97 min | Philippines:92 min

Country:

Ireland | UK | Germany

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Philippines:G | Iceland:10 | Iceland:LH (video rating) | South Korea:12 | Finland:K-11 | Germany:12 (w) | Portugal:M/12 | UK:PG | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Llechwedd Slate Caverns, Llechwedd Slate Mine, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, Wales, UK

Company:

Constantin Film Produktion

Trivia:

The movie was re-cut by the German producers, while the director was away on Christmas vacation. They wouldn't fly him back to Germany to finish the film. Four key scenes setting up its humorous tone and all religious aspects were removed.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the "Vikings" were in the Round Room, about to steal Excalibur, the Round Table knight that came in to confront the raiders said, "Which of you Vikings wants the first dance?" despite of the fact that all of them were clad in Scottish tartan.

Quotes:

Princess Ilene: I demand to see your king.
Thagnar: Harem.
Prince Gawain: What? You can't do that she's a princess.
Princess Ilene: Who the hell is harem?
[she's thrown into a room full of other woman]
Woman #1: [giggles] I wonder if she's a wirgin.
Princess Ilene: Of course I'm a virgin. I'm Princess Ilene of Brenwyn.
Woman #2: We all had kingdoms once. Now we are all queens for a night.
[Ilene looks around scared]
Monday: I am Monday.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Remake of Prince Valiant (1954)

Soundtrack:

What We Are Waiting For

Proof that Europe can hold its own with America when it comes to bad fantasy epics

"Prince Valiant" is, apparently, based upon a comic strip, although I must confess that I had never heard of it before seeing the film. The story is set in Arthurian Britain. The king's magic sword Excalibur has been stolen by a gang of Vikings from the kingdom of Thule, so Valiant, a young squire, is sent to recover it. On the way he falls in love with the beautiful Princess Ilene (a name which can be pronounced either as "Eileen" or "Elaine", depending upon which character is speaking) and discovers that he himself is in fact none other than the long-lost heir to the crown of Thule, which has been usurped by the current incumbent, the villainous Thagnar.

The Arthurian legends have not always transferred well to the cinema screen. In recent years we have had the decidedly average romance "First Knight" and the decidedly below-average epic "King Arthur". "Prince Valiant", however, falls so far below average that it almost falls off the bottom of the scale. It is not a would-be epic along the lines of "King Arthur", but rather a sword-and-sorcery adventure along the lines of "Conan the Barbarian", "Red Sonja" or (to take a more modern example) "The Scorpion King".

Stephen Moyer makes a particularly dull hero, acting as though he were recovering from a serious charisma bypass operation. Katherine Heigl makes a pretty but equally uncharismatic heroine as Eileen/Elaine; on the evidence of this film she may have had the looks to succeed as a Hollywood star, but not the talent, so I was rather surprised that she has gone on to star in successful television series and films like "Gray's Anatomy" and "Knocked Up".Edward Fox, who stars here as Arthur, is a talented actor who should have known better than to sign up for rubbish like this.

The one exception to the generally low standard of acting is Joanna Lumley, still splendidly seductive in her fifties as Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan Le Fay, but this only made me wonder why Joanna, who is one of Britain's most popular television actresses, seems to make so many bad choices when she ventures into the cinema. There have been occasional exceptions, such as her cameo in the excellent "Shirley Valentine", but too many of her films have been awful ones- "Don't Just Lie There, Say Something" and "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" are other examples.

Even worse than the standards of acting are the action scenes and special effects. The fight scenes were all clumsily handled and those alligators were ludicrously unconvincing. The storyline was often confusing and difficult to follow and the lighting was so gloomy as to make me think that the film-makers were interpreting the phrase "Dark Ages" absolutely literally. "Prince Valiant" is billed as a British/Irish/German co-production, which only goes to show that there is at least one field, the tenth-rate fantasy epic, in which the European film industry can hold its own against American competition. I can only assume that the film's European origins were the reason that it was overlooked for a well-deserved Razzie nomination. 2/10