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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 11 months

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Is It Really That Bad?

The Disney Renaissance inspired a slew of imitators, as we all know, but perhaps the most famous (or infamous, perhaps) of them all was WB’s Quest for Camelot. Usually I’d do a little more buildup before just dropping the film’s name like that, but I think we need to get it out of the way as quickly as possible so I can tell you the wild story of this film’s creation and box office failure, because boy is there a lot to unpack here.

Things seemed good at the start. Bill and Susan Kroyer, the husband-and-wife duo who brought the world FernGully: The Last Rainforest, were on board to direct the film, and it was going to be a faithful adaptation of Vera Chapman’s novel The King’s Damsel. With a PG-13 rating, a dark story, and a slew of talented animators including none other than Lauren Faust, this film was on track to become one of the most unique animated films in the animation Renaissance, a movie that could very well have stepped boldly out of Disney’s shadow and made WB a true contender! But I’m reviewing it here, so you know that didn’t happen.

What did happen was the Kroyers got the boot and were replaced by Frederick Du Chau, and this is where it all started to go downhill. Apparently he didn’t like good ideas, because he decided to trash the original idea for the film and retool the whole thing into a shameless Disney copycat, even going so far as to shoehorn in a bunch of musical numbers at the last minute and keeping a lot of the animators in the dark about what exactly they were animating (something Faust in particular has been pissed about). Animator David Germain has also said the film’s producer, Dalisa Cooper Cohen, hated animation to begin with and was only here because a film she co-produced bombed thanks to WB’s bad advertising, so right from the word go we have more red flags than you can shake a stick at.

But of course, they ignored those red flags, and they put all their chips on this being the way forward for WB animation, going so far as to burying future cult classic Cats Don’t Dance so it wouldn’t outshine this movie. They even got a tie-in meal with Wendy’s which had toys and also a special promotional ticket to get adults in at kid prices! What could go wrong with this? Let me tell you what could go wrong: Barely grossing back half the forty million dollar budget. It’s kind of a bad idea to cut your box office gains in half with a cheap ticket you can get while buying your kid dinner, y’know?

To call the results of this film’s failure devastating are a gross understatement. WB snuffed out every animated film they had in development and refused to advertise their upcoming three animated films, after this failed, ending any chance they had at ever being considered a real contender for Disney in terms of animation dominance; in fact, even after moving the release date from Christmas of 1997 to May 1998 to avoid competing with big releases, the movie still ended up competing with Mulan and losing handily, truly sealing the deal. But this movie didn’t just obliterate WB’s hopes for some of that Disney cash, oh no! This film ended up being seen as a sign the Renaissance age of animation was over due to being the ultimate shameless Disney copycat, it ended up being regarded as one of the reasons the animated musical died out for a time (though Dreamworks changing the game with Shrek is probably the bigger reason), and more than anything this film’s abysmal failure is cited by some as a reason for the death of traditional animation from western studios!

It really doesn’t help the film’s case that no one who worked on this has very many nice things to say about it. Everyone who was part of the animation team who has been asked about their experience has overwhelmingly negative things to say about it. It really seems like the entire world has it out for this film, huh? Eventually Cats Don’t Dance got its vindication as well as a massive furry fandom; meanwhile, all this movie got was a Nostalgia Critic review where Doug tore this movie apart. But is the hate warranted? Before this review, I hadn’t seen this movie in about two decades, but I remember liking it. Sure, reading all this made me very apprehensive, but I had to give it a fair shake. So is this movie a hidden gem of the time that was unfairly maligned, or is it really that bad after all?

THE GOOD

I think it’s pretty indisputable that, all things considered, the soundtrack is pretty good. There’s a reason “The Prayer” is the big breakaway pop hit of the film, to the point many people forget this is where it came from. The soundtrack is so good that even the stupid song introducing the pointless comic relief characters is pretty great out of context, and the worst track is hilarious, so bad it’s good nonsense. This is all despite the songs being a late addition, to the point that in the movie the songs either play over unfitting scenes or screech the plot to a halt only to be completely ignored once they’re finished.

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There’s a lot of flaws with the animation (which I’ll get into below), but there are things worthy of praise, such as the designs of Ruber’s half-human, half-weapon henchmen he creates with a magical potion. The standout among them, of course, is Bladebeak the axe chicken voiced by Jaleel White. You read that right. Sonic the Hedgehog voiced an axe chicken. It’s so delightfully stupid that despite Bladebeak doing nothing to meaningfully impact the plot and despite him spouting a horrifically egregious Sudden Impact reference mangled by a groan-worthy pun, I can’t help but love him. At least he’s a better pointless chicken than fucking Hei Hei.

One of the most bafflingly positive aspects of the film is that it has perhaps one of the best, most nuanced animated portrayals of a disabled character of its time. Blind swordsman Garret is portrayed as not completely helpless even with the disadvantages of his blindness, he’s learned workarounds to his condition, he’s incredibly independent and perfectly able to survive on his own, and the film never gets too sappy about it and gives him a bit of insecurity and self-doubt due to his condition. And despite the film ending with a magical healing wave, he’s not cured of his condition! He gets to keep his disability, and at the same time get knighted and score a girlfriend! How the fuck did this movie of all things manage to accidentally do representation right? Garret walked so Toph Beifong could run.

And I’ve saved the very best for last: Ruber. On paper, Ruber is about as generic a bad guy as you can get, being a power-hungry conqueror with the looks to match (one wonders what King Arthur was even thinking hiring this hulking man with clammy skin and disgustingly untrimmed fingernails), but in the hands of Gary Oldman he is elevated into the single funniest character in the entire film. Oldman’s hammy delivery of the most basic lines manages to do things like make his villain “song” (it’s in quotations because it’s basically just Ruber talking and occasionally rhyming over a beat) into a so bad it’s good masterpiece and dropping lines like “The ogre’s butt!” with far more dignity than they deserve. Throw in an intimidating griffon sidekick with an unfittingly squeaky voice and some of the most ridiculous expression imaginable courtesy of the animators, and you have a villain who was born to be a meme. His reign as king of Camelot may have been short, but Ruber will always be reigning champ of campy, ridiculous animated villains.

THE BAD

One of my biggest fears rewatching this was that Devon and Cornwall, the dragon with two heads who can’t stand each other, were going to be the most horrible, unbearable characters of all time. Thankfully, they weren’t, mainly because being portrayed by Eric Idle and Don Rickles respectively keeps the two from being completely insufferable. That being said, they absolutely do still suck and are the worst characters in the entire film.

They are very clearly meant to be the Genie of this film, the comic relief side character portrayed by a popular comedian who unrelentingly does gags and makes pop culture references, but here it just has zero rhyme or reason to it. Genie could see through time and space with his phenomenal cosmic powers, so of course he knows who Jack Nicholson is; how does this mismatched dragon duo have a clue who Elvis is when they can’t even fly or breathe fire when we first meet them? The musical number their introduced with, which is a nonstop stream of references while the two sing how much they hate each other, is especially egregious, dragging on and on despite the joke wearing out its welcome really quickly. But hey, it’s not so bad! They dress up as Sonny and Cher towards the end! What a cute little joke, I’m sure glad nothing happened in real life right before this movie came out that would make this gag tasteless and insensitive!

Our heroine Kayley is also divisive, enough to give the dragon doofuses a run for their money. Even the animators had no fucking clue what to make of this woman. Is she supposed to be whiny and vapid? Is she a genuinely likable hero who is just overshadowed by the much cooler Garret? Maybe if they could have just stuck one idea and run with it, but the production of this movie was such a disaster to begin with it’s understandble why Kayley is such a hot mess. For the record, I don’t think she’s all that bad, but she really isn’t a standout or anything. Garret and Ruber are just ridiculously cool, Devon and Cornwall are just insanely bad, Bladebeak is the greatest thing ever created, and Kayley is just… there.

The animation itself is… dodgy. Sure, the designs of everything look great… when they aren’t moving, anyway. Background extras have weird expressions frozen on their faces, characters in long shots clip through each other, and some characters just move in the weirdest and choppiest ways. That’s not even getting into the ogre, who is animated with jarring CGI that has aged just as well as you can imagine.

The biggest issue with this movie, though, is that even though it has literally everything that makes a great Disney Renaissance film present and accounted for—a headstrong female protagonist, a charming male lead, an epic soundtrack, a comic relief character, an animal sidekick, an extremely flamboyant villain—it literally has no idea how to utilize any of these things and bring them together in a coherent story. I think this is most apparent with the musical numbers, which basically just come and go with little fanfare or explanation due to how late they were added to the film, but going even further than that the film just makes no attempt to logically build off anything. Things just happen because they’re supposed to happen in this story. Oh, Ruber has a magic potion? He just got it from witches, whatever, he needs a way to make sword demons. Oh, Devon and Cornwall need an excuse to travel with the heroes? Well, uh, dragon code says they can’t help humans but they did anyway so now they’re basically in exile! Doug Walker, throughout his review, repeatedly demanded, “Explain, movie! Explain!” due to how little internal logic or reason this film has, and it’s hard not to say the same. Obviously suspension of disbelief works for things like Excalibur vaporizing Ruber or the magical forest or the existence of dragons, but we are told so much and shown so little in other areas that it becomes quite glaring.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Quest for Camelot is genuinely pretty bad, but honestly? That’s part of what makes it so charming in a weird way.

Like, this is one of the most blatant attempts at copying the Disney style out there; Anastasia was more subtle than this. And even then, it copies everything in the most nonsensical, haphazard ways possible! It has all the elements of what made the Disney Renaissance worked, but no idea how to apply them in ways to make anything resembling a coherent story, and the result is nothing short of fascinating.

“So bad it’s good” and campy animation are very underrepresented when it comes to discussions of film, though I think there’s a sense that animation that has been half-assed is more egregious than a live action film doing the same. Shark Tale is probably the premier example because of how absolutely batshit the film is, and I think Quest for Camelot easily measures up to it, though where Shark Tale is on the hilariously bad side of things, Quest for Camelot is more on the campy side of things, even if it’s mainly for Ruber’s presence alone. But even compared to Shark Tale I’d say this movie is just a smidge better, mainly because it’s less confused with what it wants to be and has a better understanding of the story structure it’s aping. It’s a mess, but it’s a mostly entertaining mess, even if it’s for the wrong reasons a lot of the time.

I’ll be honest, watching through this movie again as an adult wasn’t exactly the best, as I could see this for what it is: A desperate attempt to capture that Disney magic. At the same time, though, I don’t really think this film is nearly as bad as it’s made out to be. I think there’s a sort of charm to it, even with all of its glaring issues and how much it sucks. Ruber alone is worth watching this film for, honestly, so I’m gonna be nice for a change and say that 6.2 on IMDB is mostly fair, though I definitely think it’s only that high due to nostalgia. Realistically, I’d say this film is a 5.5, but I wouldn’t fault anyone for finding this film charming. As far as batshit insane animated movies of the 90s go this one isn’t as weird and creative as We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story or Freddie as F.R.0.7., but I think it still manages to be just stupid and silly enough to earn its place in the world.

#Is it really that bad #IIRTB #review #movie review #Quest for Camelot #WB #animation #animated movie

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