The Fairy King (2002)

Sadly Over-hyped

As Good As It Gets

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I would guess one of the dreadful things about being an actor is that you can't ever take your name off your work. Directors can hide behind pseudonyms, producers can blame the director, and everyone else can throw up their hands and blame everyone else for letting them down. The actors however are stuck there up there, on screen for all the world to see, unable to hide from the awfulness that surrounds them. And this movie is awful.Most of the blame lies with the direction - not that there appears to have been any, and a script that may well have been, judging from what arrives on the screen, little more than a rough outline, semi-improvised by the actors as they were shooting. The whole thing looks like it was shot in single, unrehearsed takes with no one having bothered to tell the cast and the few background artists what was going on or what they were supposed to be doing.In short it looks like an amateur production and I can't begin to guess at the behind the scenes events that left reliably professional jobbing actors like Corbin Bernsen*, Glynis Barber, and Malcolm McDowell so helplessly adrift; I occasionally work with youth drama groups and have seen more conviction from bored High School kids than is on display here. Still, I guess the principals all got a nice holiday in South Africa out of it - though I don't suppose anyone involved in this turd will be including any part of it in their show reels.Having said all that my hyper-imaginative, six year old, fairy loving daughter was hooked throughout and genuinely terrified during the 'climactic' trapped-in-the-mine sequence, and even my four year old got 'the message'.*Bernsen also has to suffer the indignity of most incredibly underwritten, non-specific terminal disease in the history of movies since the Production Code of the thirties prevented anyone from mentioning the clap.

This movie is not about special effects or dialogue or script writing or even acting. This movie is about belief: Belief in yourself, in others, in the healing power of faith and the power of good.Just like the after school specials of yore, this movie is an ingenious way to facilitate the continued growth of children's' faith in humanity and mankind. It helps open adults' eyes to what children take for granted.If you want a striking movie with superb acting and state-of-the-art special effects, then this movie is not for you. However, if you love fairies and you Believe in the Goodness Within, this movie should have a special place in your collection.I know my children will watch this movie when the time comes.

This absolutely dreadful film is released on videotape as THE FAIRY KING OF AR. A textbook example of how not to tell a story, the script suffers from a complete lack of direction or central conflict, and was obviously written by people who believe a "film for children" should not be damaged by the inclusion of a plot. There is absolutely no problem in this story to be solved, so the characters wander about as directed by the scriptwriters, occasionally expressing concern over the immediate situation they're in, then relief when whatever they're supposed to be worried about has quickly removed itself from the scene, so as not to perpetuate any sort of problem which might result in interest by the viewer.Malcolm McDowell is a relative of Dad, Mom, and their two kids who have inherited a gold mine in Ireland. McDowell is supposed to be scary, because the scriptwriter says so, but since his character doesn't do anything, he isn't. The family immediately and without any effort finds the lost gold mine, which is supposed to contain fairies, who have been introduced in a coompletely unintelligible introductory story told by Grandma, and indeed a young girl with funny hair painted blue does fly onto the scene to represent one of these magical creatures. She, however, doesn't do anything either, after she arrives, so the result of her appearance is that we don't give a flying fig about fairies at all. At this point, since no one else is doing anything, Dad decides to come down with an fatal illness which apparently has no name or symptoms. We don't care about this either, despite histrionics by the children, as encouraged by the director ("Why?? Why??"). After the family digs in the mine for a while, the fairies, big guys with blue latex faces and plastic eyes (?) are released, and one of them, apparently the story's title character, cures Dad's mystery illness, then promptly walks away without interacting with anyone else at all. And at this point, anyone who is still watching this will want to throw something at the TV because they've paid whatever they've paid for this video and gotten absolutely nothing in return.At no time is this film's amazing deadness intruded upon by anything even remotely interesting. It is an amazing exercise in missing or even deliberately ducking away from any sort of point, a true dirty trick on anyone who has the ill luck to watch it. It is beyond bad; it's nonexistent, and so is not recommended for adults, children, or elves.

Unbelievable lame production, worst special effects and horrible story line, the worst by far of any pictures I have ever seen. If you need a reference for lame, this is it!!!! Malcolm McDowell and Corbin Bernstein should really erase this from their portfolio!!!