Excaliburger is an old movie now, from 2000. I was 19. Here's how it was reviewed at the time.

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Michelle Caruso), Rewind Media Festival

"By far the funniest amateur comedy I've ever been exposed to ... The movie looks like it was a lot of fun to make, and it certainly is a lot of fun to watch." - Jay Bauman, Blanc Screen Cinema "Excaliburger was an excellent film. I laughed my ass off." - Wally Fong, Infiniti Productions "The story and dialogue and general creativeness was pure magic and I watched wide-eyed the whole time! Loved it ..." - Mike Stoklasa, GMP Pictures "Excaliburger is excellent. You can quote me on that." - Jon Ashby, Rewind Video Magazine "Hacky. Pageanty. Hammy. Impossible to follow. The film wasn't a complete waste of videotape. It had a few funny lines, a couple good actors. I would have liked this film if it had been 20 minutes long." - Amy Scott, Film Threat "It's funny all the way through." - Jason Santo, Mindscape Pictures

Once Upon a Waste of Time: an Excaliburger Review
by Jay Bauman, Blanc Screen Cinema

Amateur comedy is tricky. Most of the time, amateur comedies are full of in-jokes that make no sense to anyone who doesn't know the filmmakers personally, or the personalities of the actors in the movie, therefore making them nearly unwatchable to the uninitiated. It takes a great deal of skill to construct a comedy shot on video with a bunch of friends accessible to an outside audience. The audience needs to be let in on the joke from the start. If they're not, nothing that follows will make them laugh.

As an outside observer, Excaliburger did indeed make me laugh. A lot. It is by far the funniest amateur comedy I've ever been exposed to.

Director Garrett Gilchrist's historical comedy epic about fast food, unemployed dragons, disgruntled mirrors, and "The Spatula in the Stone" not only knows its limitations as an amateur comedy, but wears it's shoddiness on its sleeve from frame one. It carries a certain amount of pride for its laughable special effects and cheesy punchlines. The movie looks like it was a lot of fun to make, and it certainly is a lot of fun to watch. It's a joke-a-minute type of comedy, in the vein of Monty Python or David Zucker. With this type of humor, the jokes are always fairly hit-or-miss. Thankfully, this movie's misses are few and far between.

The plot, as inconsequential as it is, revolves around Spanky (Gilchrist), a fast food employee who gets fired after just three days at work. With the guidance of Merlin the magician (David Ashe), who is of no relation to the famous Merlin, Spanky embarks on a journey to find the Spatula in the Stone and remove it, thus making him the new king. To prepare him for his journey, Merlin sends Spanky on several quests that include killing the Fantasmalon monster, retrieving "The Sword From Whatever the Sword is From," and making his way through the Hall of Mirrors. Along the way, Spanky befriends a boy squire named Arthur (Michelle Caruso), who is actually a female ("by birth only," she insists) that joins him on many of his adventures.

As stated above, the plot is of little importance. The movie is basically one skit after another, with the plot thrown in to connect them all. What really makes this movie shine is the performances. Gilchrist is excellent as the naive and constantly irritated Spanky. For some, Gilchrist's performance may come off as annoying, but his constant whining and yelling really amused me. Michelle Caruso is also really funny as Arthur. Caruso knows how to deliver this type of material. The movie's best moments aren't the large gags and set pieces, but the bickering that goes on between Spanky and Arthur. This is all due to the chemistry between Gilchrist and Caruso. But the real scene stealer is David Ashe. David Ashe rocks. He has multiple roles in the film, but the main one is Merlin, who is by far the funniest and best written character in the flick. Anything Ashe does is funny, whether it's trying to grab a pickle jar away from Spanky ("I want to eat them! They're crunchy and delicious!") or commenting on washing his pig ("Oh, I have a dirty, dirty pig."). There are some people that can make the word "fuck" funny all by itself (Rich Evans and Jack Black being two of them) and David Ashe falls into that category. The smaller players such as Justin Bielawa as Stan/Satan and Jennifer Simmons as Oona the size shifter are also very good.

Gilchrist is very entertaining as an actor, but where he really excels is as a writer. Every scene is basically its own sketch, and just about every sketch is a million times funnier than anything seen on Saturday Night Live in the last few years. One of my favorites is the MacDonald's commercial, which basically comes out of nowhere and has little to do with the rest of the movie. "Come to MacDonald's! Eat Bloody Shit!" is probably the funniest line in the movie. I start laughing just thinking about it. Another great set pieces is when Spanky enters a Fairy kingdom, where the word "fairy" refers not only to the inhabitants being small and having wings, but also to being very feminine and flamboyant. Random Fight Club references are always appreciated too.

Not everything about the movie works of course. The Mummy of Good Taste is very random and is poorly introduced, causing more confusion than laughter. Also, the story starts to meander after a bit. There's only so many times we need to see Merlin send Spanky on yet another quest. Also, to put it bluntly, the camera work is terrible. Gilchrist has said the reason for this is that he was in front of the camera for most of the movie and had someone else in charge of shooting, but that still doesn't justify shot-reverse shots where both the actors are looking off camera in the same direction. In a way though, the horrible camera work adds to the humor and spirit of the film, so it can be easily overlooked.

For me, humor is the heart of what makes humanity so interesting. While it's not a very deep or emotionally driven movie, there is a moment late in Excaliburger that really struck a chord with me and gives me the feeling Gilchrist shares that sentiment. Arthur comments that Merlin the Magician isn't much of a magician at all, he's basically just a guy with a few tricks he can do, as we all are really. That made me smile. It's one of those little character moments that shows how heartfelt the movie really is. In the end, we truly are just a bunch of people with a few tricks we can do, and in Garrett Gilchrist's case, making me laugh is one of those tricks.

Jay Bauman

P.S. Hey Garrett, have you given Michelle Caruso my proposal for marriage yet?

Excaliburger
Orange Cow Productions
Posted by Mike Stoklasa, GMP Pictures
www.gmppictures.com

Yo Garrett, I just watched Excaliburger and I think I must add you to my list [of Favorite Amateur Directors]! Love the performances in that flick and while the camera work and editing reached an all new level of incompetence, the story and dialogue and general creativeness was pure magic and I watched wide-eyed the whole time! Loved it G! Best part was when Ashe hit the fluorescent light with the fencing sword and it crashed on his head! Classic!

Excaliburger
Orange Cow Productions
Review by Allen Richards
www.b-independent.com

Garrett Gilchrist's EXCALIBURGER is a poor-man's Monty Python movie. Picture THE HOLY GRAIL given life by a high school theater group who could probably quote every line from every episode of Seinfeld and you will have a pretty good idea of what EXCALIBURGER is all about.

For what it's worth, I don't much care for Monty Python. Short of THE MEANING OF LIFE, I don't find the movies very humorous. That "only a flesh wound" routine, while extremely quotable, doesn't even get me to crack a smile. The first time I tried watching that beast of a movie I was stoned off my ass, even then I couldn't so much as fake a chuckle. Maybe I should have been on shrooms.

That's not to say I don't appreciate EXCALIBURGER, it's just that I didn't find that everything about it worked. In Garrett's favor, he saturates his lengthy screenplay with so many jokes that viewers will find something to laugh at, including those non-Python fans like myself, if they can make it all the way through to the end. EXCALIBURGER runs long, and to quote someone else, "can sometimes be an endurance test," but Gilchrist is succeeds more often than not, and that's all you can ask of anyone making comedies. Like the adage says, if you swing at the ball enough times eventually you're going to hit one out of the park.

The story is a send up of the King Arthur legend, where a young fry cook must quest for the Spatula in the Stone. Gilchrist casts himself in the lead, probably because he was the only one he could find dedicated enough to see things through to the end. It's a problem all micro-budget moviemakers face at some point or another, and the decision to cast one's own self in a lead usually mares a production due to the lack of an objective voice behind the scenes, but given the tongue twister dialogue, Gilchrist was probably the only person who could deliver his character's lines with the inflections needed for proper comic effect.

Like all good road movies, which any Arthurian quest essentially is, eccentric supporting characters are the devices used to propel the story along. Gilchrist creates an environment adhering more to Dungeons and Dragons than Midevil Europe, where fairies and demons roam the countryside creating challenges to impede our hero's growth into manhood. It isn't until Gilchrist's Spanky learns that being a good person beats a destiny any day of the week that he's finally able to enter the world of cheap, meaningless sex.

At its best, EXCALIBURGER is a goofy and offbeat take on adolescent self-awareness in a directionless society. At its worst, it's a cumbersome and long-winded excursion into self-indulgence. Next time I suggest Gilchrist let someone else cut his movie, they might not love his dialogue as much as he does and be able to get to the point a good deal quicker.

Excaliburger
Orange Cow Productions
Posted by Barb Evenson

I don't actually like comedy all that much in general. But there is this thing in performing - if you are loving what you do, the audience will go with you.

Excaliburger is sweet, innocent, cuddly, naive, enthusiastic, open, trusting, and thoroughly charming. Perhaps people who are "serious about film" can critique it, but we have had a blast watching it.

It strikes me as lovable for the same reasons that I love teenagers in general. They aren't always suave and sophisticated, elegant or graceful, but they are always in the process of exploring, becoming, seeking, trying, expanding, growing, trying. Their failures and excesses are more beautiful by far than the successes of someone who always knows precisely where his next step should fall. And really, I find that so much more appealing than fixed, finished, polished, perfect, lifeless art.

Garrett, once you get "really good" at making films, it might take you years and years to regain what you have in Excaliburger and in Mort.

But I am betting on you. I think you'll keep more of it than most people....

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