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The Laughs Don’t Linger in Shallow ‘Knight’

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Whoopi Goldberg’s delightful comic opening scenes in “A Knight in Camelot” are a setup for disappointment: The rest of this new fantasy, loosely based on Mark Twain’s time-traveling satire, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” doesn’t match that level of hilarity.

Although shallowly written and choppily directed, there are saving graces in the extravagant settings--the movie was filmed in Budapest and at an English castle--and in scattered Goldberg moments. The rest of the notable cast isn’t too shabby, even though saddled with inexplicably contradictory personalities: Michael York is a sometimes noble, sometimes dim bulb King Arthur; Amanda Donohoe’s Guinevere is unaccountably both sneeringly vicious and sincere; and Ian Richardson’s Merlin is petty but portentous.

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Goldberg plays computer researcher Vivien, whose experiment catapults her back to 6th century England, where she is captured by a Camelot knight who thinks she’s an ogre. Her running commentary, both in her lab and in her initial discovery of life in Camelot, is laugh-out-loud funny.

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The rest is an uneasy mix of earnestness and humor. Vivien uses her laptop computer (it time-traveled with her) to take advantage of an impending eclipse. Thinking her a powerful wizard, the king dubs her Sir Boss, a Knight of the Round Table.

Sir Boss makes it her mission to bring modern enlightenment to the Dark Ages, instituting regular bathing, building a steam-driven grain mill and telling a young page (and viewers) how to make dynamite. She also attempts to abolish slavery.

Eventually, after going in disguise among the common folk with King Arthur, Sir Boss teaches the monarch and his knights about honor, chivalry and, excruciatingly, the Twist--unfortunately, her CD player made the trip too.

* “A Knight in Camelot” airs on “The Wonderful World of Disney” at 7 p.m. Sunday on ABC. The network has rated it TV-PG-V (may be unsuitable for young children, with an advisory for violence).

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