Black Knight (2001)

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The Black Knight (2001): Dir: Gil Junger / Cast: Martin Lawrence, Tom Wilkinson, Marsha Thomason, Daryl Mitchell, Kevin Conway: There is no reason to see this film unless one finds the sight of someone swallowing a mouthful of horse manure to be funny. It is an utterly useless comedy with a racial title. It stars Martin Lawrence as a theme park employee who sees a mysterious gold object in the water, which sucks him into a world where knights prowled the grounds and castles towered the horizons. He sees it as an act until he witnesses a beheading. After fainting he awakens in a castle ruled by a tyrant King for which he ends up entertaining using modern music. Boring comedy trudging in formula waste and predictable gutters. Directed by Gil Junger who made the much better, but not by much Ten Things I Hate About You, although viewers may come up with more than ten reasons to hate this film. The production is decent enough but the screenplay is a formula miss. Lawrence is reciting his regular comic routine with predictable results. We know that he will make a difference in the lives of the civilians using his modern touch and we don't care. Tom Wilkinson is a sorry sight as the King. There is the stereotypical slave girl whom Lawrence sleeps with. He also beds the King's daughter for good measure. This film should be a black mark on his career. Score: 2 / 10

With apologies to Nick (see his previous 1-star review), I myself was tempted to big this film up with a 10 (whereas I think that it deserves at least a solid 8), simply because its current dismal rating of 4.6 makes me think that reviewers have been going out of their way to trash it. Of course, it's hard to argue that there's a conspiracy afoot given that the IMDb rating is apparently based on over 24,000 honest opinions, but, as with all polling, we can question whether the verdict is based on an appropriate sample group. This film, after all, was released just two months after 9/11, making it possible that it has yet to be seen by the majority of its target audience.And who is this target audience? In my opinion, it consists of nothing less than the same rainbow-colored mainstream American moviegoers who enjoyed "Airplane!" to the tune of $83 million in box office receipts. Speaking of which, I found the "Dance to the Music" set with Martin Lawrence every bit as funny as the "Stayin' Alive" sequence with Robert Hayes. Lawrence deserves an award from the Society for Creative Anachronism for his participatory demonstration of "Norman" dancing, in which he generously welcomed the court's one obligatory wizened old crone to shake her hoary locks like she meant it -- after inspiring the sleepy lutenist to come alive (to his own hilarious surprise) with a guitar riff worthy of Jimi Hendrix, until even King Leo himself, index fingers in the air, was out on the dance floor getting his 21st-century groove on.Not that "Black Knight" is another "Airplane!", of course, but then it doesn't try to be. The movie doesn't need to rely on hundreds of one-liners and sight gags for comic effect, since the comedy stems directly from the absurd but fertile premise: a premise involving a culture clash (did anyone else notice this?) that had never been exploited on film before in one sustained cinematographic effort (not even by Mel Brooks himself): namely, the philosophically revealing collision of excessively hip South Central L.A. with excessively clueless medieval England.I, for one, found it hilarious to follow the idiosyncratic Jamal -- this demonstrative champion of 21st-century inclusive humanism -- as he brazenly confronted the liberalism-challenged court with his modern Western world view that was at once so reasonable (to us) and yet so unimaginable (to them) that you could almost hear the modern-day concepts "whooshing" right over the clueless heads of the dumbstruck royalty -- played with such hilarious verisimilitude by the lordly trio of Tom Wilkinson, Vincent Regan, and Kevin Conway that I almost wish there were an Oscar awarded for "Best Facetious Portrayal of British Royalty by a Male Co-Star" -- in which case the female award for 2001 could have gone to Helen Carey, who was unexpectedly hilarious as the rhetoric-challenged Queen.So, begging Sir Nick's pardon, but I give this film two royal index fingers up and would fain that it were viewed by a larger and more appropriate audience in the years to come, in which case methinks that its current dismal ratings should riseth dramatically.

The Black knight is a painfully unfunny film, that hangs on the most obvious joke that a time travel movie can make. That is that the hero from our present time, will travel to the past and impress the locals by introducing them to modern pop culture. In the Black knight, the title role is Jamal Skywalker (Martin Lawrence) who after taking a knock to the head, wakes up to find himself in England of the year 1328 and be caught up with rogues who want to overthrow the King and restore the throne to the former Queen. Jamal is mistaken by the King as being a representative of Normandy, and thus finds acceptance among the locals. That is until he accidentally deflowers the kings daughter. Jamal finds help along the way , in the form of a disgraced knight named Knolte (Tom Wilkinson) who despite being a drunken present, is quite capable of returning to his former glory. The problem with the Black Knight is that the jokes are too obvious. In an attempt to stop an execution from happening, Jamal decides to terrify the witnesses by proving he is a fire generating sorcerer. How? By showing them his lighter of course! Worse there's a recurring joke where Knolte survives death 3 times! Hey,if its not funny the first time, keep repeating it until the audiences laughs as a way to pray that their torture may end. Those stuck in the predicament of having suffer through this trash will at least learn the following things:That any producers for a comedy film should write the name Martin Lawrence on a blacklist. That time travel fish out of water comedies like this and Encino Man are old, stupid unoriginal, and horrifically unfunny, and that the best time travel comedy, Back to the Future, was funny because its protagonist found himself in sticky and awkward situations that had hilarious implications. Black Knight seems to think that audiences will laugh in the opening when Jamal pulls out a nose hair. If the same had been done to the films writers, I might actually have a chuckle or two.3/10Absolutely disgusting

Jamal Walker (Martin Lawrence) works in a medieval theme park until one day he's magically transported back to the Middle Ages. Bluffing his way into the royal court as an ambassador from Normandy, he gets involved with a peasant revolt.I don't mind Martin Lawrence as a rule, Bad Boys is berserker action fun, Big Momma's House has its moments and Blue Streak I confess to laughing at. But this is scraping the barrel, an unfunny spin on the time travel theme that sees Lawrence attempt to get laughs by bringing Ghetto speak to days of yore. That he doesn't succeed isn't down to him, he's full of his usual energy and gurning antics as always, it's kind of endearing in its simpleness, but the script (Darryl J. Quarles/Peter Gaulke/Gerry Swallow) is lazy and the direction from Gil Junger lifeless. Those actors working around Lawrence barely register as he blunders his way through scene after scene like a tornado in a greenhouse. Where you have to ask just what was Tom Wilkinson thinking of when he signed on for this turgid mess? I mean, he was Oscar nominated for In The Bedroom this same year. Now that's far more funnier than Black Knight all by itself.Moronic, in fact it's beyond moronic, and those who support such a movie should be rounded up, put in the stocks and pelted with rotting fruit and vegetables. 2/10