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A Knight's Tale

A Knight's Tale

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $11.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Yikes!
Review: Obviously, this movie is not meant as a strict period piece. So, I sort of can deal with the rock music. I cannot, however, deal with the heroine Jocelyn. She is annoying at best. I have to agree with other reviewers, she doesn't fit at all in the movie. Maybe if they had changed her hair, her clothing, her mannerisms. Just change something. Kate was much more interesting and no where near as strange.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This is going to be absolutely awesome . . .
Review: . . . . .right?
No. Don't get your hopes too high. The very very beginning had me cracking up with laughter (especially when the king? tapped his hand along to the beat!)and i thought this is definitely going to be a favorite film! Well, it's not. I mean, Heath Ledger was good, Rufus Sewell bad, and the Chaucer guy amusing. There are some really good and funny scenes. The script wasn't that great, but neither was it that bad either.
Except for one thing. The girl character really ruined it for me. She was dull, boring, ridiculous, weird and petty. I don't think her role, character or acting fit. They should've used someone who looked more the part historically if she was going to speak modern or they could've left her modernly bizarre with impeccable speech or something. Any sort of change would have done. Even different facial expressions. Though personally i think they might as well have cut her charactor out of the movie. She just pulled it down. (oh, and that whole jousting scene really bugs me - like yeah, to prove your love let some guy beat you up with brass knuckles or something)
The redeeming thing for me? THe Black Prince!! I totally flipped out when i realized he was in the movie - nearly moved to tears (hey, i'm a hist. buff and see him as a sort of romantic figure). For those who don't know, the Black Prince is (English) King Edward III's son. Not much is known of him (we're not even sure why he's the BLACK prince) and he died before he could ascend the throne. I always love looking up books about him and this is the first time i've seen him fictionalized (in book or film). So I was thrilled. Definitely added points to the movie. I give it 3 3/4 stars.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Knight Worth Watching
Review: This movie is awesome. The action scenes are really believable, even though you know most of it is fake because otherwise someone (like Mr. Ledger here) would get hurt. The storyline is very interesting and the humor is hysterical. Mark Addy is the quintessential 'Roland', and the guy who plays 'Wat' is absolutely hilarious. Shannyn Sossamon (who plays Jocelyn) was a new actress who had just hit the scene when she was asked to come in to read for this part. I've seen her screen test with Heath and she was just as good, if not better in her screen test. This movie is definitely worth seeing and once you've seen it, buy it--it's that good and is worth seeing more than once!!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The 13th Century Clashes with the 21st Century...
Review: The film is a tale of three squires whose master dies prior to a joust that brings them their food and shelter. In order to to have food for the evening they decide that the youngest of them, whom has some talent, should joust and bring home a prize for food. This escalates and with the help of an unheard of writer they counterfeit family tree papers, which gives them the right to continue jousting and build wealth. Knight's Tale is neither drama, comedy, or satire, since it uses all of these aspects to sell humor, morals, and values. Unfortunately, the value of the story vanishes when these three genres conflict with each other making one laugh at the film rather than the parody in the film.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Jousting for Jocelyn
Review: This is a fun 2-hour pile of raucous fluff. Heath Ledger is great as William Thatcher (aka, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, a very eccentric knight in history who did not behave like Thatcher at all), and his compatriots (including a nifty, scoundrelish Geoffrey Chaucer) are fun. The jousting scenes and costuming are enjoyable; much has been made of the use of classic rocks tunes with the soundtrack, but it works well enough, given the light-hearted tone that dominates through the majority of the movie.

Rufus Sewell is good (though underused) as the villainous Count Adhemar, though the attempt to portray him as the aristocratic past (constrasting him with Ledger as the egalitarian future) didn't quite gel with the overall tone of the movie. The appearance of Edward "The Black Prince" was nice, although I could see early on that he was ending up a plot device to bail out Thatcher.

My biggest problem with this movie is the casting of Shannyn Sossamon (aka, Angelina Jolie LITE), who doesn't work at all, except as eye candy. I think the writer/director/producer must have been in love with her, because her role as Jocelyn seemed crafted as a star vehicle for her, showcasing her within the story without making her a real part of it. The costuming and hairstyles they did for her are jarringly out of step with everybody else around her, and I found them very distracting. Yes, she's pretty, but I found her painfully anachronistic -- is she an Asian princess? A French merchant daughter? A Jewess (ala Ivanhoe)? It's unclear and is never explained. Her dad is mentioned as wanting her to marry the Count, and I can't fathom any medieval father wanting his seemingly well-born daughter to love a commoner (even a recently knighted one as Thatcher is). After watching it, I laughed that after the "Thatcher wins the girl" ending kiss, she leaves him behind and marries the Count, knowing where her interests lie.

I had hoped Thatcher would end up with Kate, the cheeky (and striking) armorer who does more for Thatcher than Jocelyn ever does by crafting him a great suit of armor that makes his career possible. But she's only played in a minor role -- I was envisioning a medieval "Some Kind of Wonderful" situation with Kate and William, but they didn't do that. The linear love story (William loves Jocelyn, Jocelyn loves William) is sadly lacking any real bumps (they have one minor bump, and it's clear that the Count will have no chance with her). Let's make them work for their unlikely love, yes?

Another thing I didn't like was that William's knightly activities are confined solely to the jousting lists -- I had hoped he'd have his mettle (and metal!) tested in actual war. The cameos by the Black Prince made me think William might actually see what true knighthood entailed in warfare, but that doesn't happen, either. So, it's all ultimately a game for William.

This is a fun movie, despite itself; it could have been an excellent one, if the writer/director/producer had worked through several more revisions and tightened up the story and made Jocelyn fit in more with the world she was in, instead of making her look like a smug refugee from a Star Trek set.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: . . . .
Review: This was a good movie, although I can't say that I was overly impressed with it. I suppose it's hard for films like these to stand up to the awe and majesty of other films like Star Wars and the like. I'm not saying that it was a bad movie. Not at all. The story is interesting, the characters appealing, and Hollywood actually managed to produce some lines that could be considered witty. When I say that I wasn't overly impressed, I wasn't overly unimpressed either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful Show
Review: I got this movie for my teenage daughter for Christmas. She just loves it. Said it was her all-time favorite. It was a wonderful show I wasn't afraid to watch with her. A very nice love story with no vulgarness. No embarrassing love scenes and no horrible language. I thought it was a great movie for a teenage girl.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Change your stars
Review: Heath Ledger stars in this creative and adorable jousting movie as William Thatcher, a squire for a knight who suddenly is thrown into the armor himself. William poses as a knight himself and begins winning competition after competition. He also wins the heart of the lovely Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossaman). As he falls further in love with her, it becomes more obvious that he is straining to keep his identity secret. He knows that if it gets out that he's a mere peasant that the best punishment he could receive would be a trip to the stocks. Unfortunately for him, he does have an enemy who seeks to make William pay for being so good with both jousting and with Jocelyn...

This is a definitely a must-see movie. You'll laugh...you'll cry. You'll sing along to the incredible soundtrack. It's definitely a very cool movie to see.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Modern Knights
Review: A great movie - and lots of fun. The people who put the soundtrack together did an incredible job at bringing the romance of knights in shining armour into the modern age. It may not be necessarily believable, but who cares? My whole family really enjoyed it, and I recommend the Soundtrack CD as well.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An unique wonderful different world on Jousting Circuit.
Review: When a young poor peasant squire by the name of William Thatcher (Heath Ledger), who's trying to get back home in London with his two pals (Mark Addy and Alan Tudyk). But when he passes himself as a Knight for survival with luck, he has passed and win the Match. But when he takes his chances with the help of writer (Paul Bettany) to make him pass off as a nobleman. Since William is becoming a natural at winning and then he falls in love with a beautiful young woman named Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossamon), he loves with all his heart but what, who stands in his way is a cruel and also a natural winner of Jousting World by the name of Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), who also wants Jocelyn and tries to do anything to put William down.

Written and Directed by Brain Helgeland (Payback) is acutally a very ambitious, entertaining, action-packed, adventure film with a sense of humor. The Cast are Terrific, including Laura Fraser as the body welder for William. The film modern day music seems to be very odd in this flick and doesn't quite pull it off. The film does slow down at times and is maybe a bit too long. Helgeland did a fine job at this movie and succeeding (Not all the way) make a near perfect picture. This is fun for all ages, is worth seeing. Super 35. Grade:B+.


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