The liveliest bits are the 60s and 70s hits that make up the kitschy soundtrack, mixing everything from "Low Rider" by War to "I Want To Take You Higher" by Sly and the Family Stone in the apparent hope of catering to a youth demographic that no longer exists. (Everclear or, God help us, Limp Bizkit probably would have been better box office.) The song selections actually work best at their most brazen, when they're accompanied by anachronistic on-screen activities -- spectators bang their hands together to the beat of Queen's "We Will Rock You," and a dance number is choreographed to David Bowie's "Golden Years." More often, they're just deliberately stoopid -- the Bachman-Turner Overdrive chestnut "Takin' Care of Business" accompanying a series of lackluster ass-whuppings, for instance.

According to a keyword search at the Internet Movie Database, jousting has not traditionally been popular cinematic behavior. In fact, IMDB lists only four other movies with "joust" as a keyword, all of them cartoons. (George Romero's Knightriders should probably be on this list.) Part of the problem, apparently, is that there aren't many good ways to photograph a joust; cinematographer Richard Greatrex (Shakespeare in Love) exhausts one possibility (long lens facing one of the jousters at a slightly oblique angle) right out of the gate but is forced to return to it again and again.

The story might be satisfying in a completely predictable way if it were at least mildly imaginative, or if the dialogue were less banal, or even if it just moved a little faster. (Believe it or not, this thing is 132 minutes long.) Instead, it feels like the bargain-basement version of Gladiator. What's really flabbergasting is that this was written and directed by Brian Helgeland (in a previous life, the co-screenwriter of L.A. Confidential), suggesting that A Knight's Tale is a project that he, at least, felt very strongly about. All I can figure is that the father-son subplot, in which the son makes his father immensely proud by rising above his station in life, registers strongly enough for Helgeland that he didn't realize how terribly maudlin (and I mean that in the eye-rolling, distinctly sub-Spielberg sense) those scenes turned out.

As far as the performances go, maybe it's unfair to criticize actors who are given so little to chew on. But I can say this: Heath Ledger is way more appealing on the movie poster, where he at least looks a little medieval, than in the film itself, where he resembles a wayward surfer. And TV commercial actress Shannyn Sossamon, inexplicably cast as the love interest, is bland-o-rama. Far better is Laura Fraser, playing second fiddle as a widowed blacksmith who eventually finds something resembling a comic rhythm. Good for her.

Theatrical aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Screened at Loews Palisades Center, West Nyack, NY