tek's rating: ½

Avalon High, on Disney Channel
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This girl named Allie Pennington (Britt Robertson) moves to a new town with her parents, who are professors that specialize in Arthurian lore, I guess. They move around a lot, never staying in one place more than a few months or so. So, Allie is excited to learn that they'll actually be staying at this new place for three years; long enough to eventually graduate from her new high school, Avalon High. And long enough to actually try out for the track team. And make friends. The first friend she makes is Will Wagner, who is quarterback of the school's football team, and I guess like class president and stuff. Most popular guy in school, anyway. And he's dating the most popular girl in school, a cheerleader named Jen (Molly C. Quinn). And Will's best friend is a fellow football player named Lance. Another friend Allie makes is Miles, who gets bullied a lot, though Will defends him. Miles isn't very sociable, and he tries to hide the fact that when he gets these sudden, intense headaches, it's because he's actually having flashes of future events. Meanwhile, Allie gets flashes of her own (though not painful ones). Not that she sees the future, but rather, the commonplace events around her are briefly replaced by visions of Arthurian stuff, like seeing football players as knights (which is a bit ironic, because the team is called the Knights).

Anyway, there's a teacher named Mr. Moore who is teaching his class about Arthurian legends, and the kids are divided into pairs to each research a different aspect of those legends. Allie is paired with Miles, and they're supposed to do a paper on the Order of the Bear (which I've never heard of and I assume was most likely made up for this movie). They end up asking Allie's parents about it, and they give the kids this journal which is apparently pretty old and unknown, or whatever. They learn about this prophecy that Arthur was supposed to be reincarnated sometime in the future and lead the world when it needed him most. (Allie's mother believes in this prophecy, but her father is skeptical.) Of course, it soon becomes obvious that Will is the reincarnation of Arthur, Jen is Guinevere, Lance is Lancelot, Miles is Merlin, and Will's delinquent half brother Marco is Mordred. I wondered who Allie was meant to be, but I figured maybe she was a descendant of the Order of the Bear, in which case she wouldn't have to be the reincarnation of any actual figure from legend. Although, toward the end, Mordred says he figured she might have been the Lady of the Lake, which should have occurred to me. However, I should also say that I never made any assumptions about any of these characters. Throughout the movie, I kept thinking it was all a little too obvious, and while a few roles were pretty clear-cut, like Jen and Lance, and probably Miles, any of the other characters in the movie could turn out to be something other than they seemed. Oh yes, I had various theories, but I won't tell you whether I was right about them or not.

Anyway, Allie and Miles learn that Arthur is supposed to rise on a night when there's an eclipse and a meteor shower at the same time, which apparently only happens every thousand years, and naturally... the next occurrence is coming up pretty soon (on the night of an important football game). They figure Marco wants to ruin Will's confidence and everything by exposing the fact that Jen and Lance are secretly dating (though they both want to avoid his finding out because they don't want to hurt him). Meanwhile, Allie gets closer to Will, and wants to help him achieve his destiny (which he is totally unaware of), and also thwart Marco's plans.

Well, I don't know what else to say without spoiling anything. I'll mention that it's based on a book which I've never read, but skimming Wikipedia's article about it, it definitely sounds significantly different from the movie. Anyway, it was a reasonably okay movie. I liked how it all ended. Not something I'd ever need to see again, but... it wasn't bad.


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