The film misses the opportunity for a suspenseful interweaving of sports spectatorship and its characters’ high-stakes gambits.
For all the attempts to update King Arthur to be cool and sexy, neither the character nor the film musters any spark.
It treats its characters as placeholders for philosophical arguments and spends the majority of its running time trying to “solve” existential mysteries without adequately exploring them.
It ultimately comes off as curiously anecdotal, lacking the dramatic dynamism that could give Pagnol’s tale new life.
There’s nothing strange—or in any way extraordinary—about this dim-witted bore.