‘King Arthur’ collapses under its own weight

Everyone has a favorite Camelot movie. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” tries very hard not to resemble any of them.

Aside from a few lustful glances, very little is left of the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle. The gritty style suggests “Braveheart,” the script’s occasional pretensions recall “Lord of the Rings” and “Gladiator” (which was partly written by this film’s screenwriter, David Franzoni), while the grotesque makeup and special effects appear to be left over from Bruckheimer’s “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

But where is Johnny Depp, or any actor willing to walk the plank to give this “Arthur” a lift? Clive Owen’s Arthur is relentlessly morose, Ioan Gruffudd’s Lancelot is poorly defined, and it comes as a major surprise — almost a plot twist midway through the movie — when it’s revealed that they’re the best of friends.

True, Keira Knightley (from “Pirates”) is easily the most aggressive Guinevere in film history, challenging Arthur’s political and religious allegiances and savagely fighting back in the battle scenes, but there’s not much more to her character or her relationships.

And the supporting cast, which includes such accomplished actors as Stephen Dillane (as Merlin) and Stellan Skarsgaard (as a vicious Saxon warlord), have even less to work with. Fuqua may have guided Denzel Washington to an Oscar in “Training Day,” but he often seems defeated by the size of this $90 million production.

He appears to be most comfortable with the battle scenes, especially a tense episode in which Arthur & Co. lure the gullible Saxons into an icebound lake that starts to crack up when they try to cross it. Yet even the action scenes are always on the verge of collapsing into “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” hilarity.

Guinevere never misses with her bow and arrow, while the supposedly tough and well-trained Saxons rarely seem capable of doing anything right. There’s even a fake Stonehenge by the sea that seems to embarrass the actors. Owen in particular appears to be cracking up as he tries to deliver a somber curtain speech.

The movie begins as the story of the child Lancelot, who is taken from his family in 452 A.D. Fifteen years later, it suddenly becomes Arthur’s story, and there are other dismayingly abrupt changes in the point of view. For awhile, Franzoni’s dialogue emphasizes religious debates, between Arthur and Lancelot, between Arthur and Guinevere, and between Arthur and the sadistic priests and traitorous representatives of Rome, but it all seems like filler between battles.

Franzoni’s screenplay does try to break from the past by positioning Arthur as a reluctant pawn in the Roman empire’s abandonment of the British Isles. Alas, Arthur’s gradual realization that Britain needs a unifying king, and that he’s the man for the job, is sketchily handled. Perhaps “King Arthur” is closer to historical truth than any previous Camelot movie, but it really doesn’t matter because so little about the characters rings true.