Krull
Released: 1983
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Director: Peter Yates

When did it become a bad thing for a movie to be silly and overblown, as long as it’s at least moderately entertaining?

I’ve seen some people blasting this movie lately, not because it was bad (which it can be at times) but because it was over the top and absurd. I found it particularly amusing when one critic accused it of being a fantasy world “too similar to our own” because horses are used for transportation and swords are the weapon of choice.

/facepalm

Granted, this isn’t a particularly good movie. “Krull” is weighed down almost to the point of collapse with clichés, and some of the acting is painfully wooden, especially the performances of Ken Marshall and Lysette Anthony (the hero and damsel, respectively). It’s one of those rare cases where the supporting cast (some very familiar names, including Liam Neeson, Robbie Coltrane, Freddie Jones, and Francesca Annis) saves the main cast from disaster.

And the movie’s special effects leave a lot to be desired, in spite of its budget. When “Krull” was made, its budget of roughly $26 million was considered lavish…and it sort of fell flat on its face. (By comparison, “Star Wars: A New Hope” – to which “Krull” is often unfavorably compared because of its plot – was made for $11 million a few years earlier.) Some of the effects are pretty neat for the time…pretty much anything involving the Slayers comes to mind immediately (especially their very unusual deaths and the way they have of rising out of the ground in the swamps…a conventional but extremely effective effect). And the hero’s magical weapon, absurd as it is, is kind of neat.

Also, much of the budget would appear to have gone into the soundtrack, the costuming and set design, as well as casting and the one blockbuster effects shot of the massive crystal spider in its huge web. But this unfortunately short-changed the rest of the effects, and some were particularly awful near the end of the movie. Anyone who’s seen it knows what I’m talking about (the badly rotoscoped, out-of-focus fish-eye-lensed Beast, and the hero’s flame-thrower hand…oy).

But it’s a movie with a tremendous amount of heart. Even Marshall and Anthony manage to turn in a couple of overeager but emotional scenes (the wedding scene, for example). The majority of the best work in the movie comes from the secondary characters, though. Freddie Jones’ wise old sage routine, for example, is always worth watching, and the scenes he did with Francesca Annis are emotionally charged and loaded with unspoken subtext-backstory that enriches the setting as a whole.

“Krull” also has one of James Horner’s most triumphant and entertaining soundtracks attached to it. It’s a rich body of music with excellent use of themes, heroic and tragic as needed, and only sounds a little bit like his score for “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (from the previous year, and on which it was pretty obviously based). The overture in particular is a magnificent piece of choral and orchestral music, and the later “Ride of the Firemares” track is one of my favorite pieces of fantasy film music.

Make no mistake, this is not a terribly good movie. There are parts of it that are actually painful to watch (due to bad acting or bad effects…or both…), and the ending pretty much trips over its own feet and falls flat on its face. And it’s possible that a lot of the value I find in the movie is purely nostalgia…when I was a little kid, it was a GREAT MOVIE!

Heh.

But it’s not an awful movie, either. It’s what I call a “popcorn” movie. It’s a light piece of fluff, parts of it are great and parts of it are tough to get past, and when it’s over you might feel a little guilty about having enjoyed it. You might even wonder why you enjoyed it.

That’s okay. Try to remember that not every movie needs to be a masterpiece. And even a bad movie can be entertaining.

(Aside: Anyone who’s familiar with James Horner’s body of work knows that my comment above about repetition in his work isn’t criticism. His film scores have a tendency to reuse themes from movie to movie, to the point where you can hear his brief Klingon theme from “Star Trek II” not only in other Star Trek movies…but also in “Aliens,” and it can be tracked back to its rudimentary form  – still recognizable – in his very first score for Roger Corman’s “Battle Beyond the Stars.” You can hear themes in his score from “A Beautiful Mind” which were clearly lifted from his score for “Bicentennial Man,” which in turn lifted themes from his score for “Braveheart,” and so on. It’s just how he works, building and evolving a theme until he’s apparently content that he’s said everything there is to say with it.)