Avalon High

    

     One of the more recent DCOM's (Disney Channel Original Movie) was kind of a bust. It's based on a young adult novel of the same name by Meg Cabot, known for 'The Princess Diaries'. If you watched the Disney Channel promos for this it looks like people from this school are going to magically swap places and time jump to medieval Camelot times, well they do, for the last maybe 5 minutes of the movie. The rest of it is a sappy love triangle story between three kids at Avalon High.
     The idea of the movie being all about Medieval Europe is implanted from the beginning, the movie is centered around Allie Pennington (Brittany Robertson) who's parents are both Medieval literature professors and have just moved and taken a contract at a local University. Allie goes to Avalon High and is immediately wooed by the football jock of the school Will Wagner (Gregg Sulkin) and at the same time finds a fancy in a brainiac named Miles (Joey Pollari). All three have the same European History class taught by Mr. Moore (Steve Valentine) and Allie just happens to arrive at Avalon High when he is teaching the Arthur legend and just happens to be using a text book about Arthur written by her parents. Also in this class is Will's girlfriend, Jen (Molly C. Quinn), his best friend Lance (Christopher Tavarez) and school bully Marco (Devon Graye).
     So, to cut the story down short and to the point and not having to go over the whole drama end of the movie I'll keep it to the main Medieval premise. Allie and Miles have been given a research paper on The Order Of The Bear, they'll come to find out it was a secret order that believed Arthur will one day return reincarnated. Everything they uncover leads them to believe that Arthur will return the night of the big football game. They suspect that Will is actually the reincarnated Arthur and he'll lead the football team to victory, and when they find Jen cheating with Lance, well there's your Guinevere and Lancelot characters. Also Miles now seems to be getting headaches which leads to visions of things to come making him into a bit or a psychic or could is he really Merlin, then you have Marco who wants nothing more than to see Will blow the whole game, making him Mordred out to kill King Arthur. All through the movie you have Allie and Miles trying to convince everyone including their teacher that Arthur is actually coming back to Earth on the night of the big football game at Avalon High.
     Finally at the end we get our big show down in the school theater where they just happen to have a set made for Julius Caesar that gives the period look and the handy placement of a sword (Excalibur) for Arthur to use. Except, Will is not Arthur....Since no one will probably watch this, if you want to stop reading because I'm going to spoil the ending.......Allie turns out to be King Arthur and her teacher Mr. Moore is actually Mordred. I know, how and why did Arthur come back as a girl is beyond me as well. This whole group of kids and their teacher are magically transported to a European landscape and battle it out and at the end, bam, back to present day just as security walks in to take Moore away. Like I said there's some stretches in the movie to be sure and most of it just felt like a teen high school chick flick making use of the Arthurian legend as a metaphor for what happens at the school, and using the medieval  theme as a way to attract some boys to the movie. In case that didn't get the teenage boys attention Director Stuart Gillard decided to throw in some jogging shots of Allies butt and chest that were very obvious why they were there (totally not needed scenes).  A final technical note this movie has some bad sound editing and whenever there seems to be any kind of background noise or music the actors volume drops and then when the background noise ends their voices go back up. Final summary, not Disney Channel's best movie by a long shot, but, it's still watchable and you won't feel the urge like some other bad TV movies to turn it off.