November 21, 2001 | The hero rises above his humble station by pretending to be nobility, the heroine is a feminist several centuries before the heyday of Gloria Steinem, the villain of the piece is a sneering knave who thinks women (and upstart impostors) should be kept in their proper places – and the soundtrack swells with an anachronistic pop tune as the lead players cavort at a royal banquet.
But enough talk of A Knight’s Tale. Let’s turn to this week’s medieval misadventure, an eerily similar trifle titled Black Knight.
The latest – and, quite possibly, least – in a seemingly endless line of movies loosely based on Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, this extremely mild comedy is a rattletrap star vehicle for Martin Lawrence, who appears hell-bent on making us forget the recent unpleasantness of What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Indeed, there is a borderline-desperate edge to his trademark shtick – shucking and jiving, prancing and pratfalling, mugging and bugging out – as Lawrence overplays Jamal Walker, a 21st-century homeboy who’s magically zapped back to Merrie Olde England of 1328.
Introducing himself as “Sir Skywalker” to the conveniently credulous King Leo (Kevin Conway) and other members of the royal court, Jamal pretends to be the herald of a nobleman en route to marry the king’s randy daughter. He also claims to be a jester, backing his words with klutzy deeds that provide a few modestly amusing moments of broad physical comedy.
For much of Black Knight, Jamal comes across as a trash-talking version of the belligerent coward that Bob Hope played in comedies of the ’40s and ’50s. At first, the time-tripping homie is reluctant to join forces with Victoria (Marsha Thomason), a beautiful Nubian handmaiden aligned with revolutionaries who want to overthrow King Leo. But eventually – inevitably, really – Jamal rises to the occasion, with a little help from the brave Sir Knolte (Tom Wilkinson of The Full Monty and Shakespeare in Love), a fallen-from-grace knight in need of a shot at redemption.
Black Knight isn’t awful, strictly speaking, just tepid and predictable. Director Gil Junger (10 Things I Hate About You) plays the fish-out-of-water set-up for easy, obvious gags, the funniest of which can be viewed in TV ads and coming-attraction trailers. The supporting players – including Vincent Regan as a villainous knight who’s semi-loyal to King Leo – are competent and well-cast. But even the immensely talented Wilkinson must recede into the background whenever Lawrence does his hyperactive bit. If you like that sort of thing, well, this is the sort of movie you might like.
