After watching "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword," I wanted to revisit "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for its realism. The new movie is not necessarily fodder for historians or aficionados of classical folklore, and those familiar with the work of director Guy Ritchie know to expect a level of, shall we say, cinematic hyperbole. He apparently feels that no statement can be made without overstatement. If it was any more over the top, it'd be a nuclear explosion right there in the theater.

Of course, by saying that, I risk falling into the same trap Ritchie does. But my intent, as always, is to capture the spirit of the movie, which is moderately entertaining, but more than moderately ridiculous. So much of the movie is amplified, it compromises the dynamics of the drama. By the time it reaches its thoroughly bonkers climax, nothing that happens seems as bonkers as it should be. And as one of the Laws of Cinema states, thou shalt not be less bonkers than thou intends, when thou intends to make a bonkers film.

To call "Legend of the Sword" a creative interpretation is like referring to the Pacific Ocean as a collection of water droplets. It's Arthurian legend adorned with Ritchie's stylistic flourishes: Goofy comedy, which fires a harpoon into the whale of stuffy British folklore. Flashy cross-cutting, which dices up exposition to make the storytelling feel more fleet of foot - e.g., flashing forward to the implementation of a complicated plan at the same time it's being mapped out. And hyper slow motion, certainly an oxymoron, for if anyone can make decelerated action seem exaggerated until it warps our perception of the passage of time, it's Ritchie. (Have you ever been so overly caffeinated that you're afraid to operate heavy machinery? It's like that.)

So at the very least, the movie is not boring. That's also pretty much where my praise ends. It's difficult not to see modern cinema as a post-"Lord of the Rings" world - or even a post-"Game of Thrones" world, to hop mediums - where any movie featuring warriors hacking away with swords and wizards and witches bedazzling with spells seems baseline derivative. Off the top of my head, 2012's "Snow White and the Huntsman" erred creatively the way "Legend of the Sword" does - I recall Snow White bedecked in battle armor giving a rousing speech to her knights under a pale grey sky before they all charged into miserable battle on a desperate, muddy plain. It is not a good memory.

I'm happy to say this King Arthur tale is not so cruddy. One of its relative charms is its art direction, which appears inspired by the vivid imagery adorning heavy metal album covers - Iron Maiden or Judas Priest for you normals, Amon Amarth or Manowar for wearers of heavily patched vests. Just imagine giant snarling beasts and Viking-like warriors clashing on the shores of seas of hellish flame, and you're in the proper realm.

The movie is, however, one of the great cliches of our day, an origin story. (Please try to stifle your groans.) The film opens with a pile of exposition and a gargantuan battle between mages and men. King Uther (Eric Bana) waits until the opposition's giant elephants mash a goodly portion of the kingdom before he unsheathes EXCALIBUR! - a sword with such narrative cutting power it demands capitalization and its own exclamation point - and cleaves his adversary in two with one mighty swipe. Moments after the bad guys are kaput, Uther's brother, Vortigern (Jude Law), sees an opportunity to betray the king and snatch the throne. Gone is the benevolent ruler, replaced by an insatiable madman, who brokered a deal for power with three classical crones, who emerge hissing from the water in a mass of roiling tentacles (don't ask).

Amidst the vituperous usurpation, the toddler Arthur is floated down the river to Londinium, where he's scooped up by prostitutes, who raise him, unaware of his heritage. Skip ahead a couple of decades, and Arthur is suave, clever and all but chiseled out of marble. He's been trained in battle by the local Asian camp of kung fu practitioners, and in business by the ladies of the night. He wears white furs and has a firm sense of righteous justice, and if we didn't know better, we might wonder if he's a pimp with a heart of gold. It's only a matter of time until Arthur's existence on the fringe ends, and he becomes a more high-profile figure. Perhaps it has something to do with a certain all-caps, heavily punctuated mythical sword, and its properly melodramatic, slow-mo removal from the mythical stone in which it is so mythically stuck.

Arthur is played by Charlie Hunnam, who's blandly charismatic in an underwritten role, which demands equal parts solemnity and irreverence. Law's take on the royal cretin Vortigern ranges from very evil to very, very evil. Much about these two foils goes unexplored, the movie rendering them boilerplate hero and villain. Vortigern is boiled down to a single expression: Law widening his eyes and sneering. It barely scrapes the tortured soul within. And Arthur's transformation from a charming low-rent Robin Hood type to savior of all England is boiled down to a few plot points, including a stint in the wilderness to fight wolves and giant bats, and routine lectures from The Mage (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), who goes on and on in grave tones about how he'll be able to wield the great and mighty power of EXCALIBUR! when he finally accepts the truth of his destiny. I wonder if the two characters' visits to their medieval psychotherapists would make for a better movie.

Is there a Round Table? you may ask, And will it be sat at? Eventually, but not until jokes are made at film's conclusion, and perhaps more so in a sequel, should demand surpass the overwhelming "meh" of the prospect of a shiny new "King Arthur" franchise. Arthur's new racially diverse Knights are eventually assembled, played by Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Tom Wu, Kingsley Ben-Adir and others, but are mostly plot devices and afterthoughts. The screenplay is sometimes lively, but inconsistent, a poker-faced fantasy-adventure punched up with anachronistic music and comedy. I feel the need to report that it does employ a deus ex machina, but unlike "Monty Python," it is not a giant hand coming down from the sky. It is far more disappointing, so gauge your expectations accordingly.

FILM REVIEW

'King Arthur: Legend of the Sword'

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some suggestive content and brief strong language

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou, Astrid Berges-Frisbey

Director: Guy Ritchie

Run time: 126 minutes