Imagine if an 8-year-old tried to write a film, and cobbled together an amalgam of characters from all the films they'd seen-'The Wizard of Oz,' 'The Never-Ending Story,' 'Star Wars,' 'Conan the Barbarian,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', Disney cartoons, etc. That's 'Wizards of the Lost Kingdom', in a nutshell.
It's essentially a half-baked coming-of-age story of a young wizard who has to recover a ring before the evil wizard finds it. Whoever made it had huge ambitions, but it comes off like an extended episode of 'H. R. Puffenstuff' just less fun and with much lamer costumes and sets. A typical middle school play looks pretty professional, by comparison.
There's no real character development, with every character remaining just as they were at the beginning. The main character is meant to be trained in wizardry, but acts mentally slow throughout and falls for the lamest, most obvious tricks in the book over and over. Rather than survive on his wits, he seems to survive by pure luck.
As noted, it's plot light, so there's not much of a story arc, more a series of predicaments, none of which has much drama. There's a seemingly endless stream of characters who come and go, sometimes in a matter of seconds, often without any explanation of who they were.
The acting is embarrassing all around, especially number-one billed Bo Svenson, who acts like he's begrudgingly playing along with his kids in the backyard. The others are either amateur or high-camp, like the cartoonishly evil bad wizard and his partner, who make Frank-N-Furter from 'Rocky Horror' seem subtle in comparison.
The action sequences often begin and end without any actual action, as if they couldn't afford a stunt coordinator and couldn't be bothered choreographing anything, so just asked the baddies to drop their swords and run away, then moved on to the next scene.
I don't think I've ever rated anything a 1, but this film definitely earned it. Terrible acting, terrible script, terrible costumes, terrible effects, terrible action sequences. I know 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' is meant to be the king of bad movies, but this one's worse.
