A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949)

This felt very much like the equivalent of those martial arts films where the protagonist can do no wrong and is never bested in any situation they encounter. Here, Bing Crosby always has to 'win' every interaction he's in, and nobody is ever allowed to be more attractive, smarter or funnier than him. He even cuts off Sir Sagramore's lines in the song they sing with King Arthur. In this respect (and given that you have a 1950s crooner in the lead role) as well, it reminded me a lot of the original Ocean's Eleven (1960) movie that has a similar thudding inevitability about every scene. (I wonder if the Elvis Presley movies are like this as well?)

Comedically, it's bordering on the childish, with none of Twain's wit in evidence amongst the "oh, I've banged my head on the ceiling" kind of gags... although you're admittedly setting yourself up for disappointment if you were expecting much from a Studio-era movie. Indeed, from a political/moral perspective, there's always something awfully false about these kinds of 1950s movies to me; the cinematic equivalent of the garish contemporary advertisements with a happy housewife and multiple grinning, insufferable children starting each question with a sing-song "Father...?" Not just false, too, but arrogant in a way I can't put my finger on. Speaking of which, the less we say about the film's "ho ho ho, what if a white person was enslaved!" setup the better, something that the film portrays with Twain's original satirical intent actually inverted.

The result is that it's mostly a tedious watch, with little to commend it beyond the way that the Technicolor process brings out the costumes, textures and sets... although even here it had something of the "we've got Wizard of Oz (1939) at home" vibe.