Druids [2001]

Did you watch Braveheart and think, this is good but what if it was a lot more convoluted? Or did you watch Gladiator and think, I like this time period but what if I got that with far more inept film making? Well, let me introduce you to Druids. This movie came out right in that sweet spot of the beginning of the "swords and sandals" genre revival expect there aren't really sandals since this takes place in Gaul and the costumer also had no idea what they were doing anyway with either the Gallic characters or the Roman ones. This movie maddened everyone at bad movie night in different ways. Kay was maddened by the inaccurate and lazy costuming. Adam was maddened by the absolute lack of war strategy competence. Erik was maddened by how the movie is called Druids but druids only appear in the very first scene and the last and hold absolutely no barring on the plot. And Sarah was maddened by how hard it was to keep track of the plot.

With that in mind, I can only give a broad overview of what happened in this film. A kid-of-some-renowned's father is killed. Druids make a really vague prophecy. The kid grows up to kill his uncle and try to unite the tribes of Gaul. And that's just the first half hour of a two hour movie. Most of the film involves this guy, an actual figure in history named Vercingetorix, trying to unite Gaul, destroying Gaul in order to piss off the Romans, and then fighting against the Romans in a battle that he ultimately lost. It really strongly feels like the French Braveheart in its tone. The French title of the film is actually Vercingétorix: La Légende du druide roi or Vercingetorix, The Legend of the Druid King, which is a much more accurate title but the name probably didn't work in foreign markets. Why not just call it The King of the Gauls? Well, probably because so few people know who the Gauls are anyway. But druids? People know them. Or they think they do since historically speaking we actually know hardly anything about them.

This movie provided us with a few laughs from bad acting and dialogue but most of our fun with this movie came from us being exasperated by the poor choices. On it's own it doesn't hold up without people to make fun of it with.

Spoon Rating: 2.5