A Knight's Tale Review
by Christopher Null (cnull AT mindspring DOT com)April 27th, 2001
A KNIGHT'S TALE
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
I was initially skeptical, to say the least, to hear the premise of A
Knight's Tale, which, for the uninitiated, is thus: Classic tale of
squires and swords is set to a loud, classic rock score. Sounds like
Rocky Horror at best, Evita at worst. Fortunately, A Knight's Tale
comes in on the high side of would-be rock operas (would-be because
there's not actually any singing in the movie, just a lot of dancing; on
the high side because they usually suck) thanks to its odd mixture of
silly fun with bone-crushing action scenes.
How do you mix a 1400's tale of jousting and swordplay with a load of
rock music? Very carefully. It all starts as a crowd chants the
opening monologue to "We Will Rock You" at the lists of a small jousting
tournament, while our squire hero Will (Heath Ledger) finds that his
master, a knight on the verge of winning the tourney, has just died. In
a fit of passion, he straps on his master's armor and rides into the
arena, winning the tournament for he and his two co-squire friends (Mark
Addy and Alan Tudyk). Thrilled with the victory, Will opts not to take
the money and split, but instead assumes the identity of a phony knight,
rockin' and joustin' his way across France en route to "The World
Championships" of jousting in London.
Of course there's a noble girl to fall in love with (Shannyn Sossamon,
something of a poor man's Angelina Jolie). And of course there's an
evil nemesis to battle (Rufus Sewell, who can apparently play nothing
but evil nemeses from now on). And yes there's a wacky sidekick -- in
this case, it's a gambling-addicted Geoffrey Chaucer (yes the Geoffrey
Chaucer, played admirably well by Paul Bettany, a poor man's Sting), who
creates the legend of Will's "Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein" through phony
documents and his crowd-pleasing introductions. And there's dancing, as
the assembled bop their way through Bowie's "Golden Years." Altogether
it's as full of anachronism your average a Renaissance Festival.
The guts of the story are borrowed from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales,
of course, with a whole lot of WWF thrown into the mix. The combatants
strut with chests thrust out, their theme songs play as they enter the
ring, and damsels swoon as they do battle in heavy, mildly nauseating
combat scenes shot in that already-clichéd, jumpy Gladiator style.
Fun? Yes, but the movie as a whole feels goofy and a little cheap,
perplexing though that what is almost a comedy runs an oh-so-serious
2:15 in length. Not too surprising considering the oeuvre of director
Brian Helgeland (best known as the writer of The Postman and the first
director of Payback until Mel Gibson fired him), whose work has always
been really, really long-winded. In fairness, he also co-wrote L.A.
Confidential, but that was long, too. A Knight's Tale is really too
protracted for the bit of fluff that it is: a reasonably good time and a
novel experiment, and nary a whit beyond.
RATING: ***
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Brian Helgeland
Producer: Todd Black, Tim Van Rellim
Writer: Brian Helgeland
Starring: Heath Ledger, Mark Addy, Rufus Sewell, Paul Bettany, Shannyn
Sossamon, Alan Tudyk, Laura Fraser, Christopher Cazenove, Bérénice Bejo
http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/aknightstale/home.html
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