Once again, musicals aren't my favorite genre

I've stated several times here how musicals aren't my favorite genre, in part because of how artificial they can be compared to Hollywood movies in general. A good example of why I don't always look forward to musicals is Camelot, which is coming up on TCM tomorrow, October 7, at 5:00 PM.

Richard Harris stars as King Arthur, and as the movie opens -- or, at least once the obligatory flashback takes place -- it doesn't seem to be that long since he's taken the throne at Camelot with England still being divided among a bunch of small competing kingdoms. But Richard soon meets Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave), and marries her, although it's an arranged marriage so neither of the two is certain they'll like the other, something that's important for actions later in the movie.

Arthur's desire is to unite England, and to do that he envisages the idea of the Round Table which will bring together all the "good" and "noble" knights in England, as if anybody who is openly aspirational of such power is really good or noble. But it's a new and revolutionary idea, which means that the existence of the idea at least is going to spread like wildfire. It's even going to spread all the way to France, where Lancelot Du Lac (Franco Nero) lives. He hears of the idea and figures he's just the thing to join the Round Table, so he heads off to England.

The English knights don't necessarily care for Lancelot for a bunch of reasons, and in their defense some of their reasoning has to do with Lancelot's personality making things more difficult for himself. He just knows that he's more noble than everybody else, and a better jouster too. At least he's able to prove that latter point objectively in the jousting competitions. Along the way Lancelot and Guenevere fall in love.

Now, part of uniting England and bringing about the Round Table includes more bringing about the rule of law as opposed to the rule of one king. Arthur's plan involves reducing the power of the king to amnesty people. This is going to come back to bite him when Lancelot and Guenevere start having an affair. There's all sorts of political infighting in the court, instigated in part by Arthur's illegitimate son from a previous relationship, Mordred (David Hemmings). They make the Lancelot/Guenevere relationship public, forcing a trial that results in Lancelot fleeing into exile while Guenvere faces burning at the stake.

There's not much plot in Camelot, although in this case that doesn't mean that Camelot is a plotless movie. Instead, it means that the story has enough plot for an old programmer of the 1930s. In the case of this musical version of Camelot, however, the movie is bloated out to nearly three hours. And boy do I mean bloated. It's slow, and frankly, the music doesn't particularly sparkle either. Musicals were really losing their popularity by the mid-1960s, and with an outdated film like Camelot, it's easy to see why.