Warner Bros., Rated G
Directed by Frederik Du Chau
Written by Vera Chapman and Kirk Di Micco & William Schifrin

In November, 20th Century Fox challenged Disney's domination in animated features with "Anastasia" and for the most part succeeded. Now Warner Bros. is trying to jumpstart their feature animation division with "Quest for Camelot." However, most of this movie just seems to be dominated by a lack of effort. It just seems like if they really wanted to show what they could do in animation, they could've tried a lot harder than this. The film focuses on Kayley (voice of Jessalyn Gilsig), the daughter of one of King Arthur's knights, who was killed by the villainous knight Ruber (voice of Gary Oldman), a very underdeveloped character. When her family is attacked by Ruber about 10 years later, she sets off to get her revenge and retrieve the sword Excalibur which was stolen and lost by a griffin. She soon runs into Garrett (voice of Cary Elwes), a blind hermit who reluctantly helps her and they (surprise!) fall in love later on. The only truly likable character(s) of this film is (are?) Devon and Cornwall, a two-headed dragon, voiced by the hilarious Eric Idle and Don Rickles. They have the only show-stopping song and many of their jokes are actually rather funny (quite a few only adults would get). If half the effort given to Devon and Cornwall were given to the rest of the plot and characters, this would be a much better film. Instead, this movie will bore adults for the most part, but children will probably like it. Some of the animation is great, but a lot of it isn't. And at least it's not overlong at a tight 85 minutes. Still, I'm going to go ahead and predict that Disney will win this round when "Mulan" opens next month. **

---

Back to the main page