JAUNTY RIDE

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

RICHARD GERE'S LANCELOT IS A cheeky existentialist. Julia Ormond's Guinevere is all up-to-date feminist spunk. Sean Connery's King Arthur is a leader for the Clinton era, well-meaning, essentially temporizing, as he impotently watches a great dream dwindle.

Camelot is, in spirit, more a modern gated community than a myth- enshrouded 6th century realm. And the great romance that was played out there--legend's Ur-Triangle--comes across in First Knight as not much more consequential than suburban adultery. Or, to be strictly accurate, adulterous yearnings. Guinevere and Lancelot never actually consummate their affair in this movie. A couple of kisses aside, they sin entirely in their heads, and then quite guiltily. One can easily imagine them as Gwen and Lance, furtively smooching on the 18th tee during a country-club dance, or stealing glances across a crowded PTA meeting--and perhaps living to regret their caution.

Yet every era has the right--maybe even the duty--to reinvent the Arthurian legend according to its lights, and so there is something instructive and entertaining about this version. Director Jerry Zucker has not spared the horses (or the broadswords) in mounting his handsome production. There are well-staged, smartly edited bursts of action at the approved modern intervals (every 10 minutes or so), the scenery is always pretty, and aside from Ben Cross's villain (imagine Pat Buchanan in not-so-shining armor), everyone is terribly nice, terribly agreeable. They are pleasant, altogether reasonable companions on this curiously jaunty ride into anachronism.