Quest For Camelot (1998)

36% of critics liked it
(22 reviews)
60% of users liked it
(25,814 ratings)

For this feature-length foray into Arthurian animation, screenwriters Kirk DeMicco (A Day in November), William Schifrin (Townies), Jacqueline Feather (Dancing in the Dark), and David Seidler (Tucker, Dancing in the Dark) adapted The King's Damosel (1976) by British novelist Vera Chapman. The… More For this feature-length foray into Arthurian animation, screenwriters Kirk DeMicco (A Day in November), William Schifrin (Townies), Jacqueline Feather (Dancing in the Dark), and David Seidler (Tucker, Dancing in the Dark) adapted The King's Damosel (1976) by British novelist Vera Chapman. The 85-minute tale follows independent, strong-willed Kayley (Jessalyn Gilsig voice, with the singing of Andrea Corr), who hopes to follow the path of her late father, Sir Lionel (Gabriel Byrne), a brave Knight of the Round Table who died defending his king against the evil Ruber (Gary Oldman). Some years later, when Ruber is joined by sidekick Griffin (Bronson Pinchot), the two manage to acquire and then lose Excalibur, the legendary magic sword of King Arthur (Pierce Brosnan with Steve Perry singing). Preparatory to his invasion of Camelot, Ruber first kidnaps Kayley and her widowed mother, Lady Juliana (Jane Seymour, Celine Dion singing). Making an escape, Kayley travels through the haunted Forbidden Forest, where she meets Garrett (Cary Elwes, Bryan White singing), a bitter blind man assisted by his silver-winged, seeing-eye falcon, Ayden. Once King Arthur's stable boy, Garrett dreamed of becoming a knight, but after he was blinded by a fire, he ran away to live in the Forbidden Forest. When Garrett learns Kayley is the daughter of the knight who trained him to fight, he agrees to help Kayley search for Excalibur. Falling in love with Kayley, Garrett soon finds the courage to start anew. With the blessing of Merlin (Sir John Gielgud), the couple sets out to save Camelot. Along the way, they meet the two-headed dragon, Devon (Eric Idle) and Cornwall (Don Rickles), a dragon duo delivering dotty dialogue replete with riotous riffs and cinematic references (to such films as Dirty Harry and Taxi Driver). Yet another supporting character is Bladebeak, a cutting-edge hybrid possibly fashioned to illustrate the axiom, "Don't count your chickens before they're a hatchet." Following the live-action/animation combo of Space Jam, this is the first fully animated feature from the L.A.-based Warner Brothers Feature Animation unit, and the film began production May 26, 1995 in L.A., expanding operations February 11, 1996 with a sister studio in London: a 20,000-square-foot facility in London's Covent Garden district. The new UK unit shared production duties on Quest for Camelot, receiving storyboards from L.A., animating with both computers and traditional techniques, and digitally transmitting completed art back to L.A. for ink and paint. At the London WBFA studio, John McKenna (previously head exec of the London City Ballet and Disney's London studio manager) initially supervised a staff of 73 (including 50 artists from the British animation talent pool) that expanded to 350. The film eventually employed over 600 staffers as it ran through a variety of working titles (The Quest for the Grail, The Quest, The Quest for Camelot). Songs by Grammy-winners David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager include On My Father's Wings, (Kayley), I Stand All Alone (Garrett), The Prayer (Juliana), and If I Didn't Have You (Devon, Cornwall). The director of Quest for Camelot is Frederik Du Chau, who attended film school in his native Belgium, entered the industry via commercials and TV series, worked for Disney France, made his own animated short (The Mystery of the Land), drew Disney projects at Baer Animation, co-directed for Sony Wonder, directed The Land Before Time 3, joined Chuck Jones Productions, and was developing his own animated project for Warner Bros. when he was asked to direct Quest for Camelot. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: G, 1 hr. 26 min.
Directed By: Frederik Du Chau, Bronson Pinchot
Genres: Animation, Kids & Family, Science Fiction & Fantasy

In Theaters: May 15, 1998 Wide
On DVD: Oct 20, 1998
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

Critic Reviews

Nell Minow, Common Sense Media
Decent full-length animated musical drama.
Jeffrey Westhoff, Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)
Quest for Camelot" slavishly follows the formula Disney minted with "The Little Mermaid."
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
An enjoyable animated feature with three buoyant songs to convey the quest theme.

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Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

Marc L

This was the company that would make the Iron Giant in a few years? Wow. The characters were uninteresting, the villain was over the top and had no personality and the heroine...Well she isn't very heroic. It's just not very good. Let's start out with some of the… More
This was the company that would make the Iron Giant in a few years? Wow. The characters were uninteresting, the villain was over the top and had no personality and the heroine...Well she isn't very heroic. It's just not very good. Let's start out with some of the good. There was one character who I found interesting. Garrett. Garrett is a blind hermit with martial arts skills who is slowly rebuilding his place in society. I can honestly say he's a pretty cool character. He deserved a better movie than this. Also, there were a few action scenes that were nice. I liked the half man/weaponry raid on Camelot. It had kind of a "Troy" feel to it. Alas, there was far more bad than good. First of all, Kayley was a very unlikeably character. Her story wasn;t interesting, she doesn't really do anything heroic (Garrett pretty much does everything for her)and she was at times annoying. I'm all into the tom boy heroine thing, but it was too stereotypical here. The villain was even worse. He was almost as overacted as the cast of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and he didn;t really have a personality. He doesn't form diabolocal plans for dictatorship like Scar and he doesn't poison the minds of others like Frollo. And as for his song. Ummmmm...No! There wasn;t much of a plot really. Basically, Kayley has too keep the sword away from the villain but return it to Camelot...Even thiough the villain is in Camelot. Nothing like lo0ng term planning, eh? If you still REALLY want to see this movie, I suggest you just watch the Nostalgia Critic review.
Dead A

This was a nice movie. Good to watch with your family. Funny and entertaining. Though I felt tiny tint of boring feeling while watching it. But that was bearable and also ignorable. Some dialogues were really funny. And the animation was okay. Not as bad as "The Black… More
This was a nice movie. Good to watch with your family. Funny and entertaining. Though I felt tiny tint of boring feeling while watching it. But that was bearable and also ignorable. Some dialogues were really funny. And the animation was okay. Not as bad as "The Black Cauldron".
Michael E

one of my favorite animated features the actors were great the only thing i dont like is ruber hes kind of annoying but other than that a classic
danny d

pretty fun family film that i watched with my son. there are some things here that are even dopey for a kids movie but i was entertained.
George R

I actually remember wanting to walk out of this movie when I was young, & that was about when I was about 7 years old.
Gavin C

Back at 1998, Warner Bros tries to make their second animated feature "Quest for Camelot", loosely based on the Vera Chapman novel "The King's Damosel" after the box office failure of Cats Don't Dance, but like that movie, it also bombed at the box office… More
Back at 1998, Warner Bros tries to make their second animated feature "Quest for Camelot", loosely based on the Vera Chapman novel "The King's Damosel" after the box office failure of Cats Don't Dance, but like that movie, it also bombed at the box office and has gotten plenty of hate and even The Nostalgia Critic himself hated it as well. But after watching this a few years ago when I was a kid, is it still as bad as the critics think it was? Well, while it's not as good as most animated features of it's time, I usually don't think it's a terrible one. It tells the story about Kayley, a teenage girl who wants to become a knight in the Round Table in Camelot after her father Sir Lionel died. Suddenly, when Ruber and his henchmen came to her home and held her mother captive in order to lead him to the sword known as Excalibur, Kayley escapes and sets off into an adventure to become a knight. She later teams up with a blind hermit named Garrett, a bird, and two-headed dragons named Devon and Cornwall to find the sword and defeat Ruber once and for all. The story isn't the best for an animated feature, but definitely not the worst. It has some great things about it to prove it. The positive aspects are the love chemistry between Kayley and Garrot. Another positive aspect is the music score and the songs. Patrick Doyle's music is lovely and attractive to listen to and the songs, although not in the majestic levels of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, they're pretty good. Not great, but still good. There are some good ones (On My Father's Wings, The Prayer, I Stand Alone, and Looking Through Your Eyes), but only three songs (United We Stand, Ruber, and If I Didn't Have You) are mostly forgettable. Then, there's the characters and in my opinion, they seemed to be mixed bags. Kayley is a pretty young heroine and her chemistry with Garrett is good, but that's just about it. Garrett was the most interesting character here due to his lack of sight which allows him to learn an important lesson about acceptance. The others, however, weren't as memorable as I thought they'd be. Kayley's mother, Julianna doesn't have enough screentime, but at least her singing was good. King Arthur doesn't get to do much and neither did Merlin, who had only two lines. The griffin was pretty good, but sadly didn't get more lines. Devon and Cornwall, the two sidekicks, can sometimes be annoying, but at least they had one good moment. Ruber, despite Gary Oldman's excellent voice acting, is a weak villain. Instead of being a menacing knight, he was annoying and kind of whiny. The worst character of them all is Bladebeak because he was served no purpose to the plot and his comedy wasn't even funny at all. Although, not as bad as the critics think it is and has some great animated and beautiful music, Quest for Camelot would've been so much better with a much better villain and some even more better songs. I'm sure kids will like it no matter what their age, but for adults, however, will be having a hard time trying to understand it's plot and characters.
Naughtia N

I'd never heard of this movie before I saw the dvd on a store shelf. I got interested and bought it right away. As it turned out I became quite fond of the movie. It has a lot of charm and adventure, everything I used to look for in a movie when I was a kid. I can't believe… More
I'd never heard of this movie before I saw the dvd on a store shelf. I got interested and bought it right away. As it turned out I became quite fond of the movie. It has a lot of charm and adventure, everything I used to look for in a movie when I was a kid. I can't believe why I haven't heard of this movie before.
Marion R

Interesting ideas for characters, but the film was poorly executed. I really wanted to like this film, but it's completely unremarkable. The animation is okay, the dragons are annoying and not any source of humor, the dialogue is weak and the overall story is boring.
Henrik S

Nothing here to be worth watching. Awful animation, no story, no characters, songs of Aryan propagandha, yay. What a waste of celluloid. My eyes hurt.