SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Benas Mcloughlin Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

ashenyoni Although the concept is original, King of Texas is incredibly disappointing. It does remain fairly faithful to King Lear, however. (Naturally, in order to make a cohesive hour and a half film, specific characters and plot elements were discarded.) Patrick Stewart, best known for his portrayal of Captain Picard, delivers an unreal, ludicrous, performance. Whoever thought it would be clever to cast an Englishman as a hard core Texan was gravely mistaken.That said, the film was not completely terrible. In fact, certain parts were outright hilarious. The film is utterly overacted. The repeated comments about the Alamo and San Jacinto are completely unnecessary, ridiculous, and tasteless, and the film is completely outlandish. But, what makes the film awful makes it watchable. The utter absurdity of this film keeps the viewer in stitches.

thejoebloggs Stephen Harrigan has produced a script that the Bard himself would have been proud of. Patrick Stewart, in the lead, heads a cast that lived up to the quality screenplay. On the whole, a magnificent film, worthy of a cinema run.

JEdwardP The film does a fair job showing the effect of madness on Lear, but a more gradual descent would've been better. The film's best work is done in showing that the madness takes hold as his role as a father is peeled away, and shows in him this lack of a connective identity, which Shakespeare seemed to suggest could lead to madness in any person.The film also does well in showing Westmore as a mirror of Lear, so it's worth watching---once.The post-Alamo setting seems silly to me, as it reminds me too much of TNT's "Ebenezer", their poor 1997 old-west adaptation of "A Christmas Carol." I feel the film would've been better in a modern setting, with Lear as business executive, let's say.The source is classic, and the acting is good, but it's misplacement can't be overcome enough to call it an excellent film.

Nozz This short treatment does well in general by the story and by the characters. The characters have a certain frontier eloquence and it isn't till John Lear goes mad-- a bit too suddenly-- that you really miss Shakespeare's poetry. The script tries to compensate for the lack of weight in the storm scene by introducing a more pedestrian revelation: Lear comes to understand that peace is better than fighting. Well, duh. On the positive side, we have sisters who are a little better motivated and less one-dimensionally monstrous than we're accustomed to and we have an interesting back-story (with an echo of the Biblical daughters of Zelophehad) in which Lear had intended his son to be heir but the son died in battle leaving only daughters to inherit.Somehow we manage to meet a pretty full cast of characters, and they all seem natural occupants of free Texas, where the inhospitable desert separates warring ranches the way Shakespeare's heath separated the little fiefdoms. The story unfolds quite naturally too, with a creditable amount of the original complexity preserved.The main weakness is the musical score, routine at best where the Texan setting provided the opportunity for something more distinctive and memorable.