It rhymes with dull. Any reasonably bright 10-year-old practitioner of Dungeons & Dragons fantasy games could have come up with as intriguing a plot as this, the pallid heart of yet another epic about swords, sorcery and damsels. Set on the planet Krull, which bears a remarkable resemblance to medieval England, its hero is a prince, Ken (TV's Marco Polo) Marshall. He acquires a lot of magical powers, though his most amazing feat consists of looking like Kurt Russell. The heroine is a princess, Lysette Anthony, who is captured by a villain known as the Beast. It's easy to see how he got his name, since he has a bulbous head and is 19 or 20 stories tall; it is less easy to see what he thinks he and the princess have in common. He wants to make her Mrs. Beast, nevertheless. Helping Marshall are a bush-league wizard (who accidentally turns himself into a basset hound), a Cyclops, a young boy, a gang of bandits and an old princely adviser. There's a lot of horseback riding, sword and laser battles, and foolhardy attacks. The film isn't too violent, gory or sexy. It's not too entertaining, either. (PG)
Your Reaction
