May 11, 2001 | Imagine a gallant knight of the Middle Ages praising his clever beloved as “my foxy lady.” Imagine 14th-century revelers shaking their booties to David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” Imagine a jousting tournament re-imagined as the ancient equivalent of a WWF grudge match, where boisterous fans cheer favorites with a sing-along, clap-along rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”
And imagine you are not watching a rerun of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
At once stunningly audacious and cravenly obsequious, A Knight’s Tale is as much a marketing ploy as a full-blown movie. Writer-director Brian Helgeland (Payback) is quite shameless in his efforts to lure the MTV generation to a medieval-era period drama with aggressively anachronistic music, moods and attitudes. At times, his almost hallucinatory hodgepodge seems the silliest thing to come down the pike since someone decided to turn The Pirates of Penzance into a goofy pop-rock musical known as The Pirate Movie. But at other times, the silliness elicits a kind of giddiness. Much to your surprise, and very much against your better judgment, you find yourself laughing with, not at, Helgeland’s crazy-quilt confection.
It helps a lot that Aussie-born hunk Heath Ledger (The Patriot, 10 Things I Hate About You) hits the right note of brash sincerity as William Thatcher, a lowly squire who assumes the noble identity and full-contact knightliness of his fallen master. It helps even more that, while touring the European jousting circuit as Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein, the baddest dude to ever lift a lance, our upwardly mobile hero has some amusing supporting players in his posse. Roland (Mark Addy of The Full Monty) is the plodding workhorse, Wat (Alan Tudyk) is the manic live wire and Geoffrey Chaucer – yes, that Geoffrey Chaucer – does double duty as a hyperbolically inclined ringside announcer and an artful forger of royal identity papers. Paul Bettany gives a smart and sassy performance as the future author of The Canterbury Tales, and he steals every scene that isn’t bolted to the floor.
On the other hand, it doesn’t help very much to have Rufus Sewell chewing up the scenery as a black-hearted knight who’s ready to rumble with Sir Ulrich. (Sewell isn’t awful, just obvious – without the saving grace of self-parody.) And it actually works against the film to have Shannyn Sossamon coming off as a snippy supermodel while playing Lady Jocelyn, the well-born “foxy lady” who captivates our hero. You can’t help thinking that, all things considered, William would be better off with Kate (Laura Fraser), the spunky blacksmith who designs a nifty new suit of armor complete with a Nike swoosh. (No, I’m not making that up.)
Helgeland repeatedly tries to have it both ways throughout A Knight’s Tale. He invites us to giggle at the seriocomic medieval tournaments – where brightly painted rowdies appear as forerunners of rabid NFL fans – but he also wants cheers and tears when he brings in William’s blind father for the climactic Super Bowl of jousting match-ups. That is, he wants us to take everything seriously, even while it’s obvious that it’s all just a goof. He’s so eager to touch all of the bases that, occasionally, he trips over his own feet.
The pop tunes on the soundtrack – ranging from Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” to, of course, Queen’s “We Are the Champions” – are deliberately jarring, but probably no more period-inappropriate than the synthesizer music that underscored the 1924 Olympians in Chariots of Fire. On the other hand, if Helgeland’s intent was to make his movie more accessible – more relevant, if you will – to the under-30 demographic, why did he choose tunes that are 20 to 30 years old? Instead of having knights mix it up to the strains of Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher,” maybe he should have gone all the way and choreographed the battles to Rob Zombie’s “Superbeast” or, better still, Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff.” And with all due respect to David Bowie, perhaps those revelers at the post-joust celebration could have shaken their groove things to Crazy Town’s “Butterfly.” I mean, if you’re going to pander to the Generation Y crowd, why do it with baby boomer anthems?
