Prince Valiant (1997)

Best movie of this year hands down!

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I liked the panoramic artwork which is very like the painstakingly done quarter of a quarter broadsheet spread frames of the syndicated Sunday comics supplements of the '50s. The special effect used to make those artworks seem to melt into reality is awesome. This is rarely, if ever, done now because of economies of print production and advertising. That, by the way is one of the reasons, the cartoonist responsible for the hugely popular Calvin and Hobbes, quit making the offbeat funny series. The Valiant here is a very competent knight unlike the one portrayed by Robert Wagner in the 1954 film who was nothing short of a bumbling fool who managed to have accidents just when he seemed to be getting the upper hand (e.g. losing his hold on a cliff as he was espying the traitorous transactions of the Black Knight with Norse marauders). Only the superb acting of James Mason as the villainous Black Knight made that older version interesting. The fight scenes in this Prince Valiant were well executed. Kudos to the arms master for the handsome suits of armor and weapons. The actress who portrayed Princess Ilene is stunning.

Romance is not dead yet. In Prince Valiant romance and adventure is very much alive. I highly recommend this to everyone in the mood for comedy, adventure, romance, and fantasy. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Terrific movie. Never heard of it until I saw it on cable. Almost as good as the Princess Bride. Should have had wider release. Wish I had seen it in the movies. Great for the kid in all of us. Katherine Heigl is an absolutely beautiful princess, and Stephen Moyer is superb as Valiant.

This is a rather funny movie with all the right fantasy-ingredients in it. The actors are alright especially Ron Perlman and Katherine Heigl. It is well made and the camera photo is inspiring - I like the tempo-changes. But there is one thing I didn't like and that was the use of animated drawings tucked inside the movie which totally destroyed it. So because of the use of animation it only gets a 7 and not a 9.