KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD [PG-13] D

The juice behind the legend of King Arthur involves so much more than Arthur yanking Excalibur free from a stone. You need the magic of Merlin and Morgan le Fay, the chaste yet seductive beauty of Queen Guinevere, and Lancelot and the rest of the Knights of the Round Table. Guy Ritchie (“Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”) sought to slowly reboot Arthurian legend by making him a lad from the streets with attitude and a quick verbal wit. Fine, I suppose, but in between the swords and magic (which are in short supply to begin with), you need to jazz things up with an earthy sensual vibe that is completely lacking. His Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) isn’t even all that interested in swinging his big sword around. He would rather run the streets and make some coin. That’s small time, if you ask me.

 

SNATCHED [R] D-

You can see the potential in teaming Amy Schumer (the comic force of nature that burst onto the feature scene in “Trainwreck,” which she wrote the screenplay for and starred in with Judd Apatow at the helm, no less) and Goldie Hawn (the Academy Award-winning comic actress best known for her leading role in “Private Benjamin”) as a mismatched mother-daughter combo caught up in kidnapping scheme. But Schumer didn’t pen this script, instead relying on Katie Dippold (“The Heat”) and director Jonathan Levine (“The Night Before”) to set up the hijinks. It’s too bad because “Snatched” feels like a barely conceived sketch that some television studio would have rejected as a pitch for a sitcom pilot, even with Schumer and Hawn on board. This laugh-free feature lacks basic story beats and any sense of character, with Schumer and Hawn floundering through all attempts to improvise some life into this very real trainwreck.