Release Date:
Friday, May 11, 2001
Watching A Knight’s Tale is a lot like attending a Renaissance festival (not that we’ve ever done that, of course—we just hear…). There is the façade of authenticity, yet you can’t help but notice the modern hairstyles, language, and pickle-on-a-stick vendors.
William Thatcher (Heath Ledger) is a working-class lad who has always dreamed of being a knight. When his liege croaks, William takes over. With the help of some false documents created by his pal Geoffrey Chaucer, he becomes Ulrich von Lichtenstein and takes the jousting circuit by storm, winning the heart of a lady and the scorn of another knight along the way.
The movie has its moments, and some of the intentionally contemporary touches are funny, but because they’re so sporadic they also tend to be distracting. Not extreme enough to be a fanciful mix of modern and medieval, the movie contains just enough anachronisms to effectively convince half of the audience that jousting spectators showed their appreciation with a thumbs-up and that Nike was originally a mom-and-pop armor shop.
In the end, though, the hackneyed love story mortally wounds A Knight’s Tale. Although our hero is a brave knight, toughened by his underprivileged past, he becomes completely whipped by a noblewoman who demands that he loses matches to prove his love. Not only does he comply, he begins to speak in romantic clichés, “Love has given me wings, so I must fly!” If he wanted wings, he should have just gotten some Red Bull from the concession stand.
William Thatcher (Heath Ledger) is a working-class lad who has always dreamed of being a knight. When his liege croaks, William takes over. With the help of some false documents created by his pal Geoffrey Chaucer, he becomes Ulrich von Lichtenstein and takes the jousting circuit by storm, winning the heart of a lady and the scorn of another knight along the way.
The movie has its moments, and some of the intentionally contemporary touches are funny, but because they’re so sporadic they also tend to be distracting. Not extreme enough to be a fanciful mix of modern and medieval, the movie contains just enough anachronisms to effectively convince half of the audience that jousting spectators showed their appreciation with a thumbs-up and that Nike was originally a mom-and-pop armor shop.
In the end, though, the hackneyed love story mortally wounds A Knight’s Tale. Although our hero is a brave knight, toughened by his underprivileged past, he becomes completely whipped by a noblewoman who demands that he loses matches to prove his love. Not only does he comply, he begins to speak in romantic clichés, “Love has given me wings, so I must fly!” If he wanted wings, he should have just gotten some Red Bull from the concession stand.