Film Review - The Kid who Would be King (2019)

The Kid who would Be King is written and directed by Joe Cornish and this is his second film after 2011’s Attack the Block, the story here concerns Alexander (Louie Serkis, son of Andy) a young boy who one night while running away from some local bullies discovers a sword in a stone which is also none other than Excalibur itself meanwhile the wizard Merlin (Angus Imrie and Sir Patrick Stewart) tells Alexander that the evil sorceress Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson) will come in a number of days to claim the sword for herself and take over a leaderless world.

The Kid who Would be King is good fun and I had a lot of fun watching the film myself, Mr Cornish has definitely learnt not only from his experience making Attack the Block but also from his colleague Edgar Wright and some of his long time talent behind the camera (Marcus Rowland, Bill Pope and Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos) also worked on this movie and they did a good job Mr Pope in particular does great work as cinematographer and makes the British landscape look very appealing.

As for Cornish’s direction it is good though there is a lot of digital effects in the film and at times it made the overall film look a little soft while the performances are also quite good, young Louie is very much his fathers son as there are times I thought he looked a little bit like his dad and has a lot of his charisma as well, Mr Imrie is very funny as the young Merlin while Sir Patrick is his usual loveable self even if he is walking around in a Led Zeppelin T-Shirt and Ms Ferguson is a great choice to play Morgana even though she doesn’t get as much to do in the film.

If I have a complaint though it’s the length, the film runs about 2 hours long and it could’ve lost about 10 or 15 minutes without hurting much of the story and the length is definitely felt in the end battle which is fun but the digital effects feel very obvious during that climax.

And so that was my review of the Kid who Would be King and it’s a fun time at the movies which is worth seeing, 3 out of 5.