Avalon High (2010) – Review

With the release of Disney Channel’s Avalon High back in 2010, it’s clear that the studio was looking to strike gold again with another Meg Cabot-based property — having made a killing with their adaptation of her book The Princess Diaries — unfortunately, with a made-for-television budget and some massive creative liberties to the source material, Avalon High was destined to end up in the dustbin of history.

We are first introduced to Allie Pennington (Britt Robertson), the daughter of two medieval literature scholars who had recently taken positions at the local college, and as the new girl at school, she finds herself running into the standard high school drama (or at least the standard drama you’d find in a Disney television show about high school). There’s not really much of a plot to this film, much of the interesting stuff from the book was ditched to make this a more family-friendly outing for the Disney Channel, and thus, we mostly get a light fantasy version of High School the Musical but without the music.

They’d have been better off remaking the musical Camelot.

Allie is plagued by strange dreams of medieval knights battling on a beach, which includes a blonde female knight on a white charger taking on a Black Knight figure, which terribly undercuts the big twist reveal at the film’s end as the identity of the blonde knight is pretty damn obvious. As the movie progresses, we are introduced to class nerd Miles (Joey Pollari) whose head-splitting psychic visions of the future quickly peg him as this film’s version of the reincarnation of the wizard Merlin. Then we have Will Wagner (Gregg Sulkin), the senior class president, star quarterback, and Homecoming King, who will be leading his team to the State Finals, and who is, of course, the reincarnation of King Arthur. Next, there is Marco Campbell (Devon Graye) the school’s resident bully, who is Will’s stepbrother and a plotting asshole, and this has Allie and Miles believing he must be the reincarnation of the vile villain Mordred. Finally, we have Lance Benwick (Chris Tavarez), the Avalon High School football team’s cornerback and best friend to Will and the beautiful Jennifer (Molly C. Quinn) who is the football team’s head cheerleader and Will’s girlfriend. These two are clearly the corresponding roles of Lancelot and Queen Guinevere from the legends of King Arthur.

This is the love triangle that will destroy a kingdom?

Allie and Miles are partnered together in her European History class by their teacher Mr. Moore (Steve Valentine), who assigns them a research paper on something called “The Order of the Bear” which, with the help of Allie’s parents, they learn was a group of people who believed that in a time of great need, King Arthur would return and bring a new age of enlightenment, but the prophecy also states that a returning Mordred would do everything in his power to destroy this new Arthur and prevent it from happening. When Allie discovers that Lance and Jennifer are having an affair behind Will’s back, she becomes determined to stop the tragedy of Camelot repeating itself, which is made quite difficult by the fact that Allie seems to have rather deep feelings for Will herself.

Could we be looking at a love quadruple?

With Marco snarking in the background and threatening her to silence about Lance and Jennifer’s affairs — which she believes is because he plans to reveal the infidelity at a more emotionally damaging time — and with the lunar eclipse and meteor that will herald the returning Arthur mere days away (and Will’s teammates turning on him for dumbass reasons), Allie is hard-pressed to figure out a way to prevent the fall of Camelot before it even gets a chance to be reborn. This is when we get the startling revelation that the supposedly helpful Mr. Moore is actually the reincarnation of Mordred — Marco turns out to secretly be a member of the Order of the Bear and was only being an asshole to stay on Mordred’s good side — and when a toy sword magically turns into Excalibur in Allie’s hands, we get the other big twist. Turns out, Allie is actually the reincarnation of King Arthur and Will is just her knight in shining armour.

What a twist!

These startling revelations would most likely confuse any fans of Meg Cabot’s book, for in the book Mr. Moore was a member of The Order of the Bear and represented Merlin — nerdy Miles isn’t even in the book — Will is the prophesized return of King Arthur and Allie is actually the Lady of The Lake, the mythical being that gave Arthur his prized sword, Excalibur. Now, I can understand the Disney Channel wanting to go with the whole “Girl Power” aspect of this version, it’s a great message for young girls, and having King Arthur reincarnated as a girl is not a bad idea. However, with that simple change, it makes all the love triangle shenanigans with Lance and Jennifer, which causes Will to lose his confidence during the big game, completely pointless. If Allie is King Arthur who cares if Will doesn’t get his scholarship? With this change, Will’s character no longer has any bearing on the plot, nor does Lance and Jennifer’s. Thus, we are left with a ninety-minute high school romance that plopped a few Arthurian names into the mix.

“On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. ‘Tis a silly place.”

Stray Thoughts:

• Allie’s dreams of herself in shining armour and leading the charge against the Black Knight should tip off even the most obtuse viewer to the fact that she is King Arthur reincarnated.
• Mr. Moore giving Allie and Miles the assignment of the “Order of the Bear” only makes sense if he were Merlin. The villainous Mordred wouldn’t want his enemies to have more information on the prophecy.
• For some reason, this version of Mordred has been given magical abilities — he even gets a magic staff — but in the legends, he was just the illegitimate son of Arthur, and it was Morgan le Fay who posed a magical threat to Camelot.
• Having the school teacher turn out to be Mordred also ruins the whole “Mordred being Arthur’s half-brother,” which was mentioned in the prophecy.

Teacher by day, Ren Fair enthusiast by night.

Disney Channel’s Avalon High was clearly a victim of screenwriters trying to give their movie a more “Girl Power” message without realizing what those changes meant to the overall framework of the original story. It’s like a movie version of the game Jenga: you pull one piece out and the whole thing topples to the ground. This isn’t the worst thing to make its way onto the Disney Channel, and it’s certainly in keeping with Disney’s usual disdain for the source material, but the level of bland acting and low production value on display here makes this entry more forgettable than bad.