ROVIN'
AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE
Brought to you by Peanut.org
Cast:
Heath
Ledger, Mark Addy,
Rufus
Sewell, Paul Bettany,
Shannyn
Sossamon, Alan Tudyk, Laura Fraser,
Christopher
Cazenove, Bérénice Bejo
Written
and directed by Brian Helgeland
Rated PG-13 for action violence,
some
nudity and brief sex-related dialogue.
Runtime:
132 minutes
Information from Internet Movie Database
I've missed a
great opportunity to have a real hissy-fit right before your eyes. I was
planning to hate A Knight’s Tale, but then I made the mistake of seeing
the film, and it won me over, right from the very start, with Queen’s "We
Will Rock You" as the background music for what at first seemed a very
medieval scene at a jousting match. As the camera panned to shirtless drunks and
fans with painted faces, I sputtered: this stuff really works. We’ve seen this
imposition of modern sports culture onto the past recently—as recently as Gladiator
in fact. Monty Python would have handled this material with more logical
absurdity or absurd logic; Mel Brooks would have deepened the illusions with
allusions and satire. But, for charming silliness or silly charm, A
Knight’s Tale plays fair by its own rules.
The film doesn’t
really add anything to our understanding of modern or medieval life, but it
somehow rolls everything up into a sweet, rather harmless romp. In fact, aside
from a glimpse of the bare buttocks of Geoffrey
Chaucer, the film is fairly clean, with mild dialogue, one rather restrained
love scene, and violence limited to canned knights knocking each other around.
Along the way, it establishes Heath Ledger as more than just a teenybopper
heartthrob. The boy can actually act, carrying the weight of the film without
any help from an established actor, such as he had from Mel Gibson in The
Patriot. And that’s a good thing. This Ledger seems rather balanced,
and I don’t mindif I have to add a new paragraph to the R & R listing of
well-known Australians.
Although Sir
Ulrich/Will Thatcher (Ledger) meets Chaucer (Bettany) on the road, he might have
run into Cinderella or Rocky. Will is a lowly squire who manages to win a
joust, earn a lot of money, and start a new though illegal career… illegal
since he is a peasant competing in a sport reserved for the nobility. He is
helped along the road to fame, fortune, and a beautiful lady—with a lot of bad
hair days (Sossamon) and just one facial expression—by Chaucer, who has
trouble keeping his clothes on or his mouth shut.
Sorry to disappoint
ladies of a certain young age but Ledger keeps his shirt on even more than he
did in The Patriot. The good news for all of us is that he bares
something more significant than his nipples: his talent as an actor. Sorry,
also, to let you down if you were expecting me to rave about this flop of a
movie, but my main complaint is that it doesn’t carry out its initial conceit
of a knight at MTV. By the last half of the film (which does drag on a bit too
far past the two-hour line), it drops its funky anachronisms for a simple
telling of its story, a story beyond good and medieval. My biggest
complaint is that the repetitious jousts become as boring as the golf in Bagger
Vance.
Oh, well, this is not
exactly everyone’s cuppa, as the estimable eFilmCritic.com, Erik
Childress, demonstrates: "one of the most embarrassing, inept, miscast,
poorly directed, shamefully written pieces" of something we don’t talk
about at Peanut.org, even with an e on the end, "to ever hit movie
theaters."
Keep your feet, dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and if you ever find yourself in a jousting match, your hind quarters as firmly set upon your horse as I hope they are at the nearest megaplex showing A Knight’s Tale. Just buy enough popcorn to share with me!