Arthur the King (2024)
Mike Light has one last chance to compete in the Adventure Racing World Championship. He’s been competing for almost two decades, and the 2018 race in the Dominican Republic feels like his last hurrah. His dad wants him to settle down and get into the real estate business. Mike’s wife, Helen, wants the same thing as Mike’s dad, but being an athlete and former Adventure Racing World Championship contestant, she understands Mike’s need to get back out and compete.
Problem is, Mike has never won a race or gotten any higher than the top ten. A lot of people within the sport think he’s a bad investment, so they’re reluctant to back him. However, Mike is good at schmoozing, so he at least gets partial funding. He gets a crack team together, including Leo, the Instagram influencer with over a million followers who immortalized Mike’s team’s humiliating defeat in a previous race. There’s also Chik, who competed on a rival team, and Olivia, a mountain climber whose dad is dying of cancer.
As for the missing funds, Mike puts up twenty-five thousand dollars of Helen’s money. She doesn’t know about it. It could get awkward and problematic but it doesn’t, or at least we don’t see it going that way.
Mike’s team gains a fifth member after the race starts, though: a scruffy little Benjy-ish mutt who bonds with Mike over meatballs and has a way of showing up when he’s most needed. The team dubs him Arthur and even though he’s clearly ailing he somehow makes it to the end of the race with them.
Arthur the King is based on Mikhael Lidnord’s memoir, Arthur—The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle To Find A Home, and naturally there were quite a few liberties taken. Mikhael found Arthur in 2014, not 2018, and the race took place in Ecuador, not the Dominican Republic. According to TheCinemaholic, “The production team considered Ecuador as a filming location but found the conditions unsuitable.”
The other obvious liberty is that Mikhael Lidnord is Swedish and Mark Wahlberg isn’t. I wonder if Wahlberg felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to imitate a Swedish accent.
Arthur the King reminded me of Cool Runnings in that it’s less about the actual victory than about the journey itself, although Cool Runnings is a lot funnier. The cinemaphotography is pretty impressive as well, a lot of it involving sweeping aerial shots. Naturally, some of the wilder stuff can be chalked up to Leo doing his influencer schtick, which gets pretty goofy. He must have had one heck of a cellphone plan to get service way out in the jungle.
The only places where the movie falls flat are the underwritten characters and the unremarkable dialogue. To be fair, though, when one is trekking hundreds of miles through the jungle and conserving energy is kind of a thing, witty quips are probably not a high priority.
Beyond that, Arthur the King is an old-school feel-good movie. There are no politics. It’s not woke. It just sets out to tell a story of courage and perseverance. While it does get a wee bit predictable and the characters are pretty much of the stock variety, it’s highly enjoyable.
Arthur the King is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: B
Principal Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Simu Liu, Juliet Rylance, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ali Suliman, Bear Grylls, Paul Guilfoyle, Rob Collins, Alani Ilongwe, Cece Valentina, Roger Wasserman, Oscar Best, Theodore Johns, Jonathan Lopez, Michael Landes, Angie Berube, Andres Castillo, Luke Grozenski, Ukai
Directed by Simon Cellan Jones.
Written by Michael Brandt and Mikhael Linord (memoir)
I know I feel relieved that Mark Wahlberg didn't do a Swedish accent.