After having seen hundreds of kitsch-crap films while working in a stock footage company, I still feel justified in declaring Lancelot du Lac the single worst film I've ever seen. I dare any critic to watch it and still maintain their "If it's French it must be good" stance.
The "plot" (stretch your imagination here) involves a power struggle between Round Table knights Lancelot, Gawain and Mordred in the dark, hopeless days before the Holy Grail is found.
Where to start? The acting is braindead, the script dull and incomprehensible, the editing nonexistent, the cinematography dingy and flat. There's a difference between "minimalism" and just plain careless filmmaking. Establishing shots drag on for ten seconds; scenes are interrupted with pointless cutaways; the same transition shot of horses riding through the forest is used 14 times; character motivations are lost through confusing scene transitions and muddy dialogue. Even the jousting tournament scene is dull: the cinematographer repeatedly focuses on running horse legs, not caring to show us who's actually riding the #@%$ horse!! The "actors" seem to have been dragged out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and told they were going to be in a film.
Lancelot du Lac isn't even amusingly bad, just painfully, painfully dull. As John Cleese would say, what a waste of human life.
The "plot" (stretch your imagination here) involves a power struggle between Round Table knights Lancelot, Gawain and Mordred in the dark, hopeless days before the Holy Grail is found.
Where to start? The acting is braindead, the script dull and incomprehensible, the editing nonexistent, the cinematography dingy and flat. There's a difference between "minimalism" and just plain careless filmmaking. Establishing shots drag on for ten seconds; scenes are interrupted with pointless cutaways; the same transition shot of horses riding through the forest is used 14 times; character motivations are lost through confusing scene transitions and muddy dialogue. Even the jousting tournament scene is dull: the cinematographer repeatedly focuses on running horse legs, not caring to show us who's actually riding the #@%$ horse!! The "actors" seem to have been dragged out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and told they were going to be in a film.
Lancelot du Lac isn't even amusingly bad, just painfully, painfully dull. As John Cleese would say, what a waste of human life.
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