Does Saturday night regularly find you in front of the box? If so, chances are you might have caught the old Bing Crosby musical, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court. Well, here's another movie spin on the Mark Twain story - but this time it's not only minus the songs, it's devoid of any laughs, originality or charm.
A minnow flapping about in a dirty puddle would make a better fish-out-of-water comedy than this. Lawrence is embarrassingly heavy-handed, shoving the word "ass" into every second sentence then expecting us to collapse in hysterics. Surrounding his street jive jabber with a medieval context isn't enough to force life into a script that's dead on arrival.
"You have to admire his commitment," says the king at one point. "It's no longer funny but he refuses to give up on the job." And how ironic, in the year that Tom Wilkinson got a (well deserved) Oscar nomination for In The Bedroom, he should also be in two of the biggest stinkers - this and Before You Go.