O Príncipe Valente

I liked the panoramic artwork which is very like the painstakingly done quarter of a quarter broadsheet spread frames of the syndicated Sunday comics supplements of the '50s. The special effect used to make those artworks seem to melt into reality is awesome. This is rarely, if ever, done now because of economies of print production and advertising. That, by the way is one of the reasons, the cartoonist responsible for the hugely popular Calvin and Hobbes, quit making the offbeat funny series.

The Valiant here is a very competent knight unlike the one portrayed by Robert Wagner in the 1954 film who was nothing short of a bumbling fool who managed to have accidents just when he seemed to be getting the upper hand (e.g. losing his hold on a cliff as he was espying the traitorous transactions of the Black Knight with Norse marauders). Only the superb acting of James Mason as the villainous Black Knight made that older version interesting.

The fight scenes in this Prince Valiant were well executed. Kudos to the arms master for the handsome suits of armor and weapons.

The actress who portrayed Princess Ilene is stunning.

Beautiful sets, great costumes and makeup.

Run of the mill script. Mediocre acting.

Bad special effects and stunts,and bad film-editing.

The special effects were truly terrible. Just stop-the-movie awful. Alligators that don't move and clearly are not alive. One alligator, clad in plate mail (huh?), shoots vertically out of the water into the air and descends down onto the stonework beside the water, where it doesn't move -while characters run about, pretending to be fearful of the clearly-lifeless, unmoving armor-clad alligator.

And lots of characters swinging Tarzan-like on ropes, slamming feet first into the villains. Except the actors are clearly hanging on ropes being moved by an overhead crane. And the ropes move slowly, as if there was great concern on the set about hurting the actors. In these scenes the villain conveniently stands in one spot until the slow-swinging good guy finally collides with him. This isn't a one-time screw-up; the slow-swinging Tarzan-bit happens over and over again.

The film editing is bad enough that it makes it hard to follow the story at spots. And the stunts and special effects kept blowing up the suspension of disbelief.

There is plenty of no-brainer action, though, and high production values on the sets and costumes. This could have been fun if it was better made.

This is a rather funny movie with all the right fantasy-ingredients in it. The actors are alright especially Ron Perlman and Katherine Heigl. It is well made and the camera photo is inspiring - I like the tempo-changes. But there is one thing I didn't like and that was the use of animated drawings tucked inside the movie which totally destroyed it. So because of the use of animation it only gets a 7 and not a 9.

After seeing the somewhat visually overwhelming Lord of the Rings trilogy, this was a pretty decent fantasy film to watch. Whilst most of the characters were pretty generic, some were good to watch, especially Prince Valiant. The violence was pretty tame, although this is not really a problem, as most of it looks realistic for the times that the story is set in, as does the armour and weapons, aside from maybe Excalibur. The special effects are slightly cheesy, but all the same they didn't really damage the story. You could kind of tell what the ending was going to be, but the story flowed well. Overall, a good movie to watch.

this was a lovely film on a great cartoon. It completely delivers in full. Stephen Moyer played I fantastic Valiant, and I like the modern edge on the princess. Joanna Lumley made an evil Morgan Le fay come to life.It was funny, had plenty of action and just the right amount of romance. I thought it was cool and well worth watching. I'd recommend it to anyone

Jaivien@hotmail.com