‘THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING’: Rated PG

The legend of King Arthur comes alive in the modern world when the titular hero of “The Kid Who Would Be King,” a 12-year-old British lad, stumbles upon the Sword in the Stone at a demolition site.

One thing to know about this kid-friendly adventure is that, aside most notably from Patrick Stewart appearing as Merlin the Magician and Rebecca Ferguson as the sorceress Morgana, the central characters are mainly children.

For reasons that are seemingly unrelated to Brexit or not, the United Kingdom is in a state of division and chaos, as newspapers blare headlines of impending war and its unthinkable consequences.

The country’s savior is an unlikely school kid named Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis), who along with his nerdy best friend Bedders (Dean Chaumoo), is bullied by classmates Kaye (Rhianna Dorris) and Lance (Tom Taylor).

Fortune as well as a heavy burden fall upon Alex’s shoulders when, in the course of being chased, he happens upon the Excalibur sword and manages to extricate it from a concrete block at a construction site.

A confluence of events, and not just that he has devoured books on King Arthur, convinces Alex that he’s the Chosen One, in other words the once and future king, even if Britain’s Royal Family is already well-established.

The fun part is when the young Merlin (Angus Imrie) shows up disguised as an awkward, socially inept new student at Alex’s school, and fitfully reveals his magical powers in ways hilarious and weirdly offbeat.

When the young Merlin sneezes, he often turns into an owl or becomes his older self (the Patrick Stewart version), adding gravitas to Alex’s mission to save England from the army of undead knights that rise up out of the ground seeking to snatch the Excalibur sword.

The villain is, of course, the evil Morgana, who has been trapped for centuries in a tangled web of vines but now rears her ugly head at the prospect of snatching the Excalibur so that she might plunge England into darkness.

Alex and Bedders, our intrepid heroes, are spurred by young Merlin, recharging himself by devouring chicken nuggets, on a journey to Stonehenge as a gateway to the island of Tintagel, which is linked to King Arthur and ground zero for the clash with Morgana.

Just as King Arthur united his foes, Alex and Bedders form a tenuous truce with Lance (shades of Sir Lancelot) and Kay, as the quartet of classmates come under the tutelage of young Merlin for the eventual showdown with the dark side.

Alex and his own Knights of the Round Table make their last stand at Dungate Academy, enlisting the student body for a climactic showdown of good versus evil.

With an army of heroic kids, “The Kid Who Would Be King” plants its flag firmly in the camp of entertainment for adolescents. In that respect, the themes of courage and honor resonate for some energetic fun.

‘BLACK MONDAY’ ON SHOWTIME

Shades of “The Wolf of Wall Street” and Gordon Gekko, and just about any film about Wall Street or with its name in a film title, are all you really need to know about Showtime’s dark comedy series “Black Monday.”

The title refers to the stock market crash of October 19, 1987, and how things evolved over the period of one year preceding this financial calamity, as told from a comically cynical point of view.

The first scene is jarring in that it starts with the day of the crash, when a red Lamborghini limousine parked in front of the Stock Exchange becomes the landing pad for an apparent suicidal window jumper.

Flash back to one year earlier and Don Cheadle’s Maurice “Mo” Monroe, acting pretty much like his immoral management consultant in “The House of Lies,” runs an outsider brokerage firm called the Jammer Group.

Fueled by massive amounts of cocaine and an inflated ego, Monroe manages his motley crew of traders as if they were all residing in the fraternity of “Animal House,” where the high spirits of John Belushi and Tim Matheson and the rest run amok.

In other words, and to an even greater extreme, the Jammer Group’s traders are foul-mouthed boors who would run over their own mothers to scam clients and execute big payoff trades.

Standing out in this group of sexist sharks is the lone female Dawn (Regina Hall), almost equally crude as the guys, but also Monroe’s ex-girlfriend who just might be the brains, if not the voice of reason, of the whole operation.

Then along comes Andrew Rannells’s Blair Pfaff, a naïve newcomer who has put together a trading algorithm that could be revolutionary. He’s quickly marked for victimhood by the manipulative two-faced Monroe.

“Black Monday” is full of swagger and brutal satire as it mercilessly mocks the brokerage world. It’s also crude, indulgent, outrageous, offbeat and darkly funny, almost as if the script was penned by David Mamet.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.