THE MISTS OF AVALON (2001) Wimpiest King Arthur ever! Marion Zimmer Bradley's book The Mists Of Avalon is the ultimate chickification of Arthurian legend, like First Knight but, y'know, moreso. I was surprised there wasn't an Oprah's Book Club sticker on it. I liked it all right for a while, and I understand the purpose of retelling this tale from the women's perspective, but in these women's perspective, all men are bad and/or lame, all Christians are bad and/or lame, and most men are Christians so you can imagine how silly they look. The central conflict in the story is that of the old, seemingly matriarchal pagan order getting shut out by a rising Christian patriarchy - essentially King Arthur for Wicca chicks. And hey, I can dig it. It's not like I don't sympathize. Screenwriter Gavin Scott's adaptation of this book into a TV miniseries overcomes some expected hurdles and trips over others. Most fans of the book seem to dislike this show, for reasons entirely different from why I wasn't too crazy about it. Ask a Christian what they think of this show, then ask a pagan, and you'll probably get two very different answers. Of course, they all liked the book more than I did and had way higher expectations (to call the book a cult favorite would be understating the case). Between us, we all seem to agree that this was pretty lacking. I would not be the first to suggest that maybe, just maybe, they should've gotten a woman to write it. Just a thought. No point in getting into the plot yet, most people have a general idea of it anyway. It is Arthurian legend, after all. There are some twists here you probably haven't seen before, but let's look at the characters first. The female portion of this movie is tops, even if none of them seem to understand that you shouldn't stand up in a canoe. Angelica Huston plays the Viviane, Lady Of The Lake, "The voice of the Mother Goddess on Earth" -like the pagan Pope. Juliana Margulies is Morgaine (AKA Morgana LeFay), Arthur's half-sister, who shacks up with Arthur not due to sorcery of her own doing, but as part of a masked ritualistic sex act where neither participant knows who they're with (it all sounds like fun and games until you find out you slept with your brother). LeFay is usually portrayed as one of the villains of this story, but not here; she's actually the central character and narrator. No, the nominal villain here is her, uh, aunt? Morgause (Joan Allen). I can't keep the relationships between these women straight. Of the women, only Samantha Mathis as Gwenwyfar disappoints, and maybe that's the point anyway (isn't she the weakest link in EVERY King Arthur movie?). Even in the book, she was constantly whining, page in and page out, nothing around her Christian enough to put a stop to the whining. With this manipulative she-harpy as this story's major representative of Christianity, I feel a little manipulated myself. Did I mention that she's whiny? It's with the men that this movie comes up short. They're almost all completely flat and lifeless. Merlin (Michael Byrne) dies, Merlin the magician freakin' dies and it's like, who cares? The only impression he leaves is that he sure seemed whipped by Viviane. Edward Atterton as Arthur, fuuuuuck, watching this guy is like watching wallpaper peel. This story ultimately makes Arthur a weak-willed, easily manipulated failure by having him cave in to Christianity; at least, a failure considering that he came to be king in no small part for the purposes of keeping the pagan faith alive in the land. He even starts looking like Jesus! They ALL start looking like Jesus! The son of Arthur and Morgana's union and the movie's other nominal villain, Mordred (Hans Matheson), has a little more fire in his belly, even though for much of his screen time I thought he was Corey Feldman. Lancelot is one of the only likeable men here, played by Michael Vartan as an unexpectedly seamless cross between Hugh Grant and Han Solo. The story does seem, to the best of my recollection, to be pretty faithful to Bradley's book, even including its most bizarre conceit - that Gwenwyfar's "affair" with Lancelot was not only done with Arthur's knowledge, not only under his orders, but while he was right there in the bed, engaging in a kinky sloppy-seconds three-way. I did not expect this miniseries to go that far; I admire that it did. I read one guy say that "what it demands is a 13-hour Masterpiece Theater adaptation". Get real - fans are lucky it got four hours (with ads) instead of two. The Mists Of Avalon is photographed very nicely and I'll not complain about any of its technical aspects, especially considering what was done with only twenty megabucks. The score features a couple of Loreena McKinnit songs, which are way more appropriate here than they were in Soldier, the garbage-planet movie. The Mists Of Avalon is, at its core, too much of a chick flick to show Dark Ages Europe as the gritty, dirty, bloody, smelly, hell just plain earthy place which is most of the appeal of stories set in Dark Ages Europe. It's all so clean. Swordplay is unexpectedly plentiful, for the first half anyway, but expectedly bloodless. It's a hell of a step up from, say, First Knight, that other recent chickification of Arthurian legend. This one's so different than every other King Arthur movie I've seen that I feel cheap judging it in the context created by the rest, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that throughout this movie, I just couldn't stop thinking of how much better Excalibur was. Still, you could do worse than this miniseries, which at least creates a convincing and involving fantasy world, which is the #1 responsibility of any movie like this. It's pretty - like its female stars. Maybe a little too pretty - like its male stars. BACK TO THE M's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE