A comedy starring John Goodman with a title like "King Ralph," you know it's probably going to be nonsense, but you hope that it's funny nonsense. "King Ralph" was funny for like the first 10 minutes or so then after that it was just pig snot. Within the first 10 minutes the entire royal family of England was killed by electrocution when they were taking a group photo in the rain: funny. In the country's search for an heir of some sort they came up with Ralph Jones (John Goodman) who was a singer in a dive in Las Vegas: funny. Once he took the job of king of England it was no longer funny.
It was exactly what you would expect: he was a fat clumsy American who knew nothing--I mean not even the least bit--about England or being a monarch. You know what, scratch that. Forget about not even knowing how to be a monarch, because many people would probably not know anything about that, he didn't even know how to be dignified in any sense. He stumbled around like the oaf he was making one stupid blunder after another. And the puns were so painfully bad that I was begging for a tranquilizer. Just to give an example: they dragged on a conversation about fox hunting for about a minute (which was 59 seconds too long), in which Ralph was referring to chasing women while the Englishman was referring to hunting actual foxes. It was walking across a lake of Legos barefoot bad.
He found a girl of interest at a strip club, which you knew was going to be a problem for him being of royalty. Was he going to have to choose her over the crown, was he going to have to defend her honor, or what? Eventually, his antics and his relationship with this girl effectively embarrassed the entire country and he decided to step down. And the last act of let's-give-us-a-happy-ending he rectified some of his errors, abdicated the throne to someone more worthy, and got the girl.
It was really a pathetic movie trying to show how there can be a middle path between the stiff stuffiness of English behavior and customs and the brash, silly, ill mannered, undignified behavior of Americans. The concept itself for this movie was novel and funny in theory, but it was very cliché and irksome in practice.
It was exactly what you would expect: he was a fat clumsy American who knew nothing--I mean not even the least bit--about England or being a monarch. You know what, scratch that. Forget about not even knowing how to be a monarch, because many people would probably not know anything about that, he didn't even know how to be dignified in any sense. He stumbled around like the oaf he was making one stupid blunder after another. And the puns were so painfully bad that I was begging for a tranquilizer. Just to give an example: they dragged on a conversation about fox hunting for about a minute (which was 59 seconds too long), in which Ralph was referring to chasing women while the Englishman was referring to hunting actual foxes. It was walking across a lake of Legos barefoot bad.
He found a girl of interest at a strip club, which you knew was going to be a problem for him being of royalty. Was he going to have to choose her over the crown, was he going to have to defend her honor, or what? Eventually, his antics and his relationship with this girl effectively embarrassed the entire country and he decided to step down. And the last act of let's-give-us-a-happy-ending he rectified some of his errors, abdicated the throne to someone more worthy, and got the girl.
It was really a pathetic movie trying to show how there can be a middle path between the stiff stuffiness of English behavior and customs and the brash, silly, ill mannered, undignified behavior of Americans. The concept itself for this movie was novel and funny in theory, but it was very cliché and irksome in practice.