Movie Review by Neils Hesse
Starring: Martin Lawrence, Tom Wilkinson, Marsha Thomason, Vincent Regan
Director: Gil Junger
Jamal Walker (Martin Lawrence) works in an old-fashioned mediaeval style theme park in the ghetto as an attendant. The park faces serious competition from a new, bigger and brighter mediaeval park called Castle World that has come to the neighbourhood. Jamal’s boss hoped that he would come up with a plan on how to deal with this threat, but to her surprise he instead suggests that she should sell off her property and move out of the ghetto. Meanwhile Jamal is planning to get a job at Castle World himself as soon as possible.
While cleaning the park’s moat he discovers a gold medallion, which he grabs hold of and is magically transported back to ‘real’ mediaeval times. Here he saves the life of a knight called Knolte (Tom Wilkinson), masquerades as a messenger from France, beds the king’s daughter, falls in love with one of the king’s maids (Marsha Thomason) and helps the queen regain her throne. All these events cause changes to Jamal’s life that in turn affects the future of his work place.
A steadily paced movie under Junger’s adequate direction, Martin Lawrence is, as always, funny but his character would have worked so much better in a different environment. BLACK KNIGHT isn’t exactly a bad movie, in a way it’s quite enjoyable, but the jokes are really not funny enough and the story is just too simple to satisfy an adult audience. This is really one for the kids who would probably really enjoy it while accompanying adults can smile and be amused.
