The Kid Who Would Be King (2019) – A film review

THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING involves a young boy in London named Alex, who spends his days bullied at school, primarily because he sticks up to those bullies – Lance and Kaye – to protect his bullied friend Bedders. In the heat of one of those skirmishes, Alex stumbles upon a ‘sword in the stone' like the one in his book on King Arthur left to him by his absent father, and he manages to pull it out from the concrete block that had been its home. Knighting Bedders with it, the boys are soon visited by a teenage representation of Merlin (he claims to age backwards), who is lost in time and newly in disguise as one of their schoolmates. Merlin gets Alex up to speed about his quest to save humanity from enslavement from the coming of the dormant but powerful witch Morgana within four days (when a solar eclipse will happen), and that he'll need to raise an army of his friends, and enemies, to become the king of legend.  Joe Cornish writes and directs. Features Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Angus Imrie, Rebecca Ferguson, and Patrick Stewart.