A Knight's Tale

Heath Ledger, as the recent Josie and the Pussycats presciently pointed out, is the ‘new Matt Damon’, a strikingly handsome and stunningly talentless pin-up with one of the most expressionless and downright punchable faces in Christendom. He first came to notice in the 1999 teenflick Ten Things I Hate About You, and looks set (in the short-term at least) to carve out at least a B-list Hollywood career. So it comes to pass that A Knight’s Tale, an excruciatingly unfunny medieval romp with a neat line in sub-Benny Hill humour, marks the latest point in Ledger’s quest for world domination.

Set in 14th-century France, with its cast all hideously decked out in the sort of clobber people allegedly wore back then, Knight’s Tale stars our hero as a ‘commoner’ named William Thatcher, who wins a fencing joust when forced to step in for his liege Sir Ector after the latter dies from horrific mutilations sustained during said joust. Victory accomplished, Thatcher then sets out to become a renowned fencing champion in spite of the inconvenient fact that the sport is reserved for noblemen. However, a fortuitous encounter with unemployed gambling-addicted drifter-poet Geoffrey Chaucer (yes, that one) comes in very handy, the latter’s literacy allowing Thatcher to forge the documentation that enables him to enter fencing tournaments under the name Sir Ulrik of Liechtenstein.

Thatcher (you would change your name, wouldn’t you?) becomes smitten with the beautiful aristocrat Lacy Jocelyn, and develops a life-and-death rivalry with dastardly snob Count Adhemar, who has plans to marry Jocelyn: however, when the Count fucks off to help fight the Hundred Years’ War, it seems our Ulrik has a clear run at both the world championships and his lady’s affections.

In keeping with the sadistic form of her species, however, Jocelyn demands that Ulrik prove his love for her by losing (???), and then changes her mind after he has suffered what she deems to be sufficient punishment, thus forcing him to come from behind and win. But going into the final joust, the dastardly Count has tipped his lance with steel, gifting him an unfair advantage and a potentially life-threatening one for our hero. From here on in, for those viewers still conscious, it’s winner takes all...

If said synopsis might seem a little on the lengthy side, it’s because A Knight’s Tale seems practically endless. The film’s insanely grandiose132-minute duration defies belief, given the less-than-epic nature of the goings-on which it documents and the utter historical irrelevance of the subject matter. Paul Bettany (Gangster No. 1) at least puts in tons of effort as the incessantly rambling Chaucer, occasionally providing the closesst the film has to offer to good company, but Ledger runs the full gamut of emotions from blank and vacuous to blank and vacuous, and the extras are an eyesore. When all else fails, as it generally does, the script switches to ‘bawdy’ Carry On comedic mode, but invariably manages to make matters worse by simply not being remotely amusing.

It has taken some doing for director Brian Helgeland to come up with a worse film than his last one (1999’s Payback) but he’s managed it.And the jousting audience actually claps and chants in time with Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’. Need I say more?