King Arthur
Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: July 7, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
46
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
21
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
An engrossing, highly intelligent reimagining of the legend of Arthur. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Not a bad movie, although it could have been better. It isn't flat-out silly like "Troy," its actors look at home as their characters, and director Antoine Fuqua curtails the use of computer effects in the battle scenes, which involve mostly real people. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
An action film without a completely empty head, and these days, that's as rare as Excalibur itself. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Impressively made and well acted by an exceedingly attractive cast, this dark tale of ceaseless conflict is adult entertainment and will likely disappoint viewers expecting a "Camelot"-like love triangle. Read full review
70
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The film boasts all the hallmarks of the '50s historic epic save the presence of Tony Curtis. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
If King Arthur is as magnificently ridiculous as any Bruckheimer picture, its thuggish charms, which owe as much to Monty Python as to Sam Peckinpah, more than pick up the slack. Read full review
70
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
By going back to its origins and dusting itself off, the King Arthur story has proved itself to have a very contemporary resonance. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
In a movie like this one, a little madness is its own Holy Grail. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Overall, King Arthur sinks into a grim, gray torpor - though it's an odd, not unentertaining movie. The approach is different, if not edifying or convincing. Read full review
63
USA TodayMike Clark
For better or worse, but surely satisfying novelty needs, Jerry Bruckheimer's King Arthur is set much earlier than usual and against the crumbling Roman Empire, which may even (or not) be historically legitimate. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
King Arthur does to this legend what "Troy" did to Homer, with one important difference: It's a better movie. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Forget all that accuracy business and just enjoy the movie for what it is: a large-scale, passably engrossing tale of valiant knights doing valiant deeds. Read full review
60
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Conceptually compelling, but the interest ends there, in part because the humans get squeezed to the margins in favor of pseudo-history and clashing battleaxes. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
While Keira Knightley brightens things up as Guinevere, the casting is otherwise lackluster. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMoira Macdonald
Unfortunately, King Arthur is somewhat less compelling than the "Lord of the Rings" movies; there's serious intent here, but an often thudding execution. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineNick Schager
Revisionist mythmaking of the most bland variety, the Jerry Bruckheimer produced King Arthur purports to tell the true tale of the ancient British hero and his valiant Knights of the Round Table by stripping away the magic, mystery, and majesty of the fable and replacing it with grim n' grimy realism. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Fuqua deliberately downplays the fantastical in King Arthur, but the gritty faux realism wears itself out quickly. You've seen one lancing, you've seen them all. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Everything is pre-medieval and unwashed, but with Antoine Fuqua at the steering wheel King Arthur is still a comic book, if a little more "Classics Illustrated" in tone than we'd have the right to expect. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
A nutty, often enjoyable farrago of craft and cinematic sampling, King Arthur moves fast and loose, and is almost aggressive in its absence of an original idea, in and of itself a Bruckheimer trademark. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Luckily there is an element of broad, brawny camp that prevents King Arthur from being a complete drag. Read full review
50
PremierePeter Debruge
I'd gladly take the legend over this dreary pseudo-historical mumbo jumbo. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Plays like a remake - not of "Knights of the Round Table" (1953) but of director Antoine Fuqua's previous "Tears of the Sun" (2003). Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
This glum and grandiose new King Arthur has little to do with the Camelot monarch we've come to know through books and film. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsStaff (Not Credited)
This version has action, yes, but the love triangle among Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot is diluted, and there's nothing exuberant about a dutiful slog through the muck. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
If only the sum of this thunderously self-important "true story" outweighed its often fabulous parts, but it resorts to throwing up hollow icons in that most ignoble of losses, the expensive mediocrity. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Strains credulity at every turn. Read full review
40
NewsweekMarc Peyser
Unfortunately, none of this is very much fun. The cinematography is dark and depressing. The dialogue is stilted. And for some reason, director Antoine Fuqua has even ditched the Arthur/Guinevere/ Lancelot love triangle. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
An Arthurian tale minus everything the average person knows or cares about Arthur and his knights. Read full review
40
SalonStephanie Zacharek
It's hard to care about a valiant groping for accuracy when a story is so badly told you can't tell what the devil is going on. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
King Arthur is a snooze, overcast and drizzly both on location and on the pages of the script. Owen is too classy, too James Bond-handsome to realistically portray the not-yet-King Arthur. Read full review
40
Film ThreatClint Morris
Thankfully, the dependable Ray Winstone ("Sexy Beast") is in the film too and gives a droll, slightly-more realistic take of an uncultured abet to Arthur's side. Read full review
40
TimeRichard Schickel
The weather is always inclement, the protagonists are all muddy when they're not bloody, King Arthur's Christianity is muscular but joyless, and Guinevere is often daubed with blue paint. No, folks, we're not in Camelot anymore. Read full review
40
EmpireIan Nathan
Nothing aligns, nothing builds, and before you know it we’re hip-deep in the big showdown -- a free-wheeling frenzy of choreographed combat that neglects to find much space for the cast. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Too long and too full of itself to offer more than a few fleeting moments of entertainment. It doesn't take long for tediousness to triumph. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
If they decided not to give us Camelot, did they have to leave us with so Camelittle? Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
There, in its midst, stands a freeze-dried Arthur -- stripped of his legend, shivering in the cold and wondering, like the rest of us, where in hell the magic went. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderHank Sartin
The result is your basic Bruckheimer action spectacle plus lots of leather, shaggy haircuts, and Celtic tattoos. Read full review
30
SlateDavid Edelstein
King Arthur is profoundly stupid and inept, but it's an endless source of giggles once you realize that its historical revisionism has nothing to do with archeological discoveries and everything to do with the fact that no one at Disney would green-light an old-fashioned talky love triangle with a hero who dies and an adulterous heroine who ends up in a nunnery. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Bleak, remarkably turgid, tediously violent, devoid of drama, deprived of magic, stripped of romance and, except for one of the oddest boy-meets-girl scenes in movie history, a befuddled and befuddling excuse for entertainment.
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
In King Arthur, everything goes wrong. The film combines the plodding sincerity of a Ph.D. dissertation with the brains of a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer- produced blockbuster (which it is), and no one benefits. Read full review
25
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The movie gives us a Round Table and a flashing Excalibur but no magic, no mystery, no mythic resonance. Mostly there's a lot of slashing swordplay that should appeal to the picture's target audience of young males. Read full review
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