“With these hands I make… FIRE!” “We have fire.”

Justin’s rating: If desperate acting was an emoticon

Justin’s review: When I was a kid, my parents put a hard counter on the piles of scifi and geeky books I’d check out from the library by making me read an equal amount of classics (dumbed down for younger readers) and biographies. I wasn’t the biggest fan of those, but a few stuck with me.

I seem to be the only person I know who is aware of the life story of Alvin York, a WWI Medal of Honor recipient. And I was kind of partial to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, mostly because it involved time travel. Likewise, this is why I picked up Black Knight — it at least tangentially is a time travel story in the vein of Mark Twin’s tale.

Martin Lawrence, in the middle of his leading man era, leveraged his star power into this questionable venture. Here, he plays Jamal, a not-terribly-bright amusement park employee who discovers the hard way that his place of employment is also — for reasons unexplained — a portal to the England 1328 A.D.

At first, he thinks he somehow arrived at “Castle World,” the rival theme park, but eventually Jamal wises up to the fact that he’s actually in the medieval period. He falls into some court intrigue between a king and a deposed queen. There’s also a cute servant girl involved, because somehow they have to explain why there might be a black woman in Ye Olde England.

Unfortunately, this flick doesn’t do terribly much with the time travel elements, although I didn’t have high hopes that this would be the case. Jamal does call himself “Skywalker,” introduces the frappuccino, and teaches everyone how to have an impromptu dance party, but it’s not as though he is smart enough to leverage future knowledge to dominate the past.

Listen, this isn’t a complicated film. It’s a warmed-over fish-out-of-water story where some of the humor comes from the cultural misunderstandings. The rest, such as it is, involves Martin Lawrence channeling his best Eddie Murphy by mugging for the camera and running his mouth in the hopes of striking on a fan-favorite quote or two.

Some comedies are true ensembles (my favorites), some feature a duo or handful of stars bouncing off each other, and then there are some where it’s just one big-name guy or girl hogging the whole plot, all the good lines, the romantic subplot, the heroic scenes, and so on. It reminds me of that famous Simpsons episode about Poochie the Dog where Homer gives the note, “Whenever he’s not in the scene, everyone should be asking, ‘Where is Poochie?'”

That’s what it felt like here. The few brief seconds where Martin Lawrence wasn’t on screen, everyone was asking, “Where is the coolest brother in the whole Dark Ages?”

What I’m saying is that while Black Knight isn’t terrible, it could’ve been a lot better if it was less of an ego vehicle for Lawrence. Every other character is playing it straight in a medieval court drama while he goons around. If he had some other comedy partners, I think it could’ve done much better. But as it was, I found this tedious and trying upon my patience.

Intermission!

• Starting the movie with watching the lead brush and floss was certainly a choice
• What exactly is he shoveling out of the moat?
• Is this town really in need of TWO castle-themed amusement parks?
• “911! 911! White man down! White man down!”
• “You can read and write?” “Yeah! Who you been dating?”
• That’s one nasty toilet
• I honestly didn’t think they’d go through with the execution
• The horse dropkicking that guy got an honest laugh from me.
• “What’s that?” “It’s to burn off the leeches.” OK, laugh #2.
• This may be the cringiest music/dance scene I’ve ever witnessed
• Aww he gives him a bag of gold
• “Your daughter’s a freeeeeak”
• “Saw it done with a blunt axe once. Took all day. Just hacking and hacking and hacking and hacking.”
• Are those fire arrows coated in napalm or something?
• “Fifth time’s the charm!” laugh #3
• At the lake, his medallion keeps going in and out of his shirt depending on the shot
• Wait, he knows boxing?
• The queen’s bizarre speech “void your rheum upon my bosom!” was a half laugh #3.5
• Still making Rodney King jokes in 2001
• And now for a very bloodless battle in which half the extras die a bloodless death
• Football plays can win fights
• So wait, was it all a dream?
• So it ends with him getting eaten by lions, because there’s no way he got out of there, right?