Welcome to July and another installment of Drunk Movie Monday! On-time this month, because I am a responsible adult who can maintain schedules she sets for herself on her own blog. Occasionally.
This month, we’re tapping once more into the fruitful vaults of the Disney channel original movie genre, because it is a genre unto itself. I give you: Avalon High.
The film: Avalon High (2010)
The premise: This modern “adaptation” of Arthurian legend follows Allie Pennington, daughter of two prestigious Arthurian legend scholars, as she moves to new school Avalon High (get it? Avalon?). She befriends quarterback Will, whose girlfriend Jen (Gweneviere!) is cheating on him with his best friend Lance (ahahaha!), and then more forcibly befriends Miles, a weird kid who has psychic headaches and for some reason expects nobody to notice when he continually predicts the future. 20 points if you can guess who he’s a reincarnation of.
You heard me: reincarnation. Avalon High is about characters from Arthurian legend being reincarnated according to prophecy in an American high school, complete with weird inspirational speeches, cartoonish villains, and astonishingly bad special effects. Allie and Miles must inspire Will to rise above the betrayal of his friends and the evil plotting of his evil stepbrother Mord–sorry, I mean Marco–in order to fulfill the prophecy and bring light to the world, like Arthur failed to do before him. THEN THERE’S A PLOT TWIST THAT I’M NOT GOING TO GIVE AWAY BUT TWENTY POINTS IF YOU CAN GUESS IT.
Why you should watch it: Honestly, the fact that this is a reincarnation King Arthur adaptation set in a goddamn Disney high school ought to have already sold you, but in case you need more persuasion:
1. The dialogue. Oh, god, the dialogue. It’s all bad, but Allie is the worst: she has “sassy protagonist” written all over her, and yet not a single witty comeback or joke she makes is even mildly funny within the context of the film. I’m honestly not sure which is worse–the lines themselves, or the frankly awful delivery from the actress playing her. Put them together, though, and you have unintentional comedy gold. And she has like six inspirational speeches, so there’s a lot where that comes from.
2. Marco’s “evil” plotting. I don’t really know how to describe this without giving them away, and really they’re best left as a surprise, so suffice it to say that there is nothing even remotely sinister about this character, and yet the movie takes him so seriously. It’s a delight to watch people getting completely bent out of shape about what amounts to a grade school prank.
3. The ending. Good lord, the ending. Nevermind that the source material is too epic for a high school setting and thus the entire plot is clearly destined to crash and burn from the beginning; this movie sells the hell out of its conclusion, pouring it full of plot twists you saw coming a mile away, embellished with a whole lot of ham-fisted acting and blatant symbolism. It’s delightful.
The drinking game: Drink whenever they explicitly mention an Arthurian figure, especially King Arthur himself.
Bonus: Drink whenever Allie makes a “witty” joke that isn’t witty at all. Drink twice if she laughs at it herself.
Where it’s available: It’s on Netflix!
Roundly yours,
M.M. Jordahl
“I don’t know how things are at your house, but around here dinner just isn’t complete without a King Arthur poem.” -Allie Pennington
P.S. There’s fan fiction.
M.M. Jordahl 