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EXCALIBURGER
Produced by David Ashe
Written, Directed, and Edited by Garrett Gilcrist
Director of Photography - David MarshallSpanky - Garrett Gilcrist
Merlin/Narrator/Irate Customer/Townsperson/Fairy/The Mummy of Good Taste - David Ashe
Squire Arthur - Michelle Carusa
Mr. McDonald - Dan BuziGarrett Gilcrist's EXCALIBURGER is a poor-man's Monty Python movie. Picture THE HOLY GRAIL given life by a high school theater group who could probably quote every line from every episode of Seinfeld and you will have a pretty good idea of what EXCALIBURGER is all about.
For what it's worth, I don't much care for Monty Python. Short of THE MEANING OF LIFE, I don't find the movies very humorous. That "only a flesh wound" routine, while extremely quotable, doesn't even get me to crack a smile. The first time I tried watching that beast of a movie I was stoned off my ass, even then I couldn't so much as fake a chuckle. Maybe I should have been on shrooms.
That's not to say I don't appreciate EXCALIBURGER, it's just that I didn't find that everything about it worked. In Garrett's favor, he saturates his lengthy screenplay with so many jokes that viewers will find something to laugh at, including those non-Python fans like myself, if they can make it all the way through to the end. EXCALIBURGER runs long, and to quote someone else, "can sometimes be an endurance test," but Gilcrist is succeeds more often than not, and that's all you can ask of anyone making comedies. Like the adage says, if you swing at the ball enough times eventually you're going to hit one out of the park.
The story is a send up of the King Arthur legend, where a young fry cook must quest for the Spatula in the Stone. Gilcrist casts himself in the lead, probably because he was the only one he could find dedicated enough to see things through to the end. It's a problem all micro-budget moviemakers face at some point or another, and the decision to cast one's own self in a lead usually mares a production due to the lack of an objective voice behind the scenes, but given the tongue twister dialogue, Gilcrist was probably the only person who could deliver his character's lines with the inflections needed for proper comic effect.
Like all good road movies, which any Arthurian quest essentially is, eccentric supporting characters are the devices used to propel the story along. Gilcrist creates an environment adhering more to Dungeons and Dragons than Midevil Europe, where fairies and demons roam the countryside creating challenges to impede our hero's growth into manhood. It isn't until Gilcrist's Spanky learns that being a good person beats a destiny any day of the week that he's finally able to enter the world of cheap, meaningless sex.
At its best, EXCALIBURGER is a goofy and offbeat take on adolescent self-awareness in a directionless society. At its worst, it's a cumbersome and long-winded excursion into self-indulgence. Next time I suggest Gilcrist let someone else cut his movie, they might not love his dialogue as much as he does and be able to get to the point a good deal quicker.