'A Knight's Tale' 20th Anniversary: Why This Bizarrely Anachronistic Action Comedy Still Holds Up

On paper, absolutely nothing about A Knight’s Tale should work. The whole concept sounds more like a dare than it does an honest-to-god film pitch. Writer/director Brian Helgeland’s 2001 film, which was released 20 years ago this month, is a romantic comedy-adventure set around the sport of jousting sometime during the Middle Ages, but the whole thing is scored to some painfully obvious classic rock and performed in a goofy anachronistic style with all the production design of a mid-tier renaissance festival. I mean, that sounds terrible, right?

A Knight’s Tale is not terrible. In fact, A Knight’s Tale is pretty dang great and remains a joy to watch two decades later. Who knows how these things happen? Movies are a magical alchemy. Sometimes all the right ingredients seem to be there – a fool-proof concept, an exciting cast and crew – only for the end result to be a disaster. And sometimes you get the opposite: A film that seems like a surefire train wreck but that blossoms into an endlessly rewatchable minor classic thanks to a filmmaking team that believes in what they’re doing, are all on the same page when it comes to the material, and who are able to bring out the best in each other.

I can hear you quibbling with my use of the term “minor classic.” Well, might I remind you that A Knight’s Tale opens with Mark Addy announcing a man’s death by declaring, “The spark of his life is covered in shite,” while Alan Tudyk violently and repeatedly kicks the guy’s corpse. Those two play Roland and Wat, squires to the recently deceased knight, Sir Ector. The unexpected passing is a huge blow to them, as Ector was just one victory away from winning a big jousting tournament and claiming the golden prize. But Ector’s third squire, William, played by Heath Ledger in what was supposed to be the role that would launch him to superstardom, has a better idea. What if William disguises himself as Ector, so they can win the tournament and claim the prize for themselves?

The ruse works so well that the trio elect to keep it going, even though only genuine knights are supposed to be allowed to compete. To get around that, William brings a destitute writer named Geoff into their scheme who can forge William’s papers of nobility. (Goodbye, William Thatcher. Hello, Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein.) In one of the movie’s many delightfully corny jokes, Geoff is revealed to be the famous English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who’s played by Paul Bettany with his charisma knob turned up to 11. Later on the gang teams up with Kate (Laura Fraser), a female blacksmith who’s out to prove her armor is just as good as that made by men. Together, the quintet makes for a kind of underdog sports team, which isn’t an accident as A Knight’s Tale is clearly designed and constructed as a sports movie. It’s built on the typical root-for-the-little-guy framework that has powered everything from The Bad News Bears to Hoosiers. Except here the sport is jousting, and everyone’s wearing tunics and armor.

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Again, it all sounds a bit iffy. And I haven’t even told you about William’s quest to woo Jocelyn, a beautiful noblewoman played by Shannyn Sossamon. He uses pickup lines like “Perhaps angels have no names, only beautiful faces,” and “If I could ask God one thing, it would be to stop the moon and make this night and your beauty last forever.” This is actual dialogue in A Knight’s Tale. And you know what? Nobody cares if it looks lame in print because Ledger delivers it so endearingly that it ends up being sweet on the screen. It’s like this entire movie was in danger of being painfully earnest, but Helgeland stepped on the gas, steered into the skid, and somehow took the movie past that and into “this movie is so unrelentingly sincere, while also being incredibly silly, that how could anyone not completely fall in love with it?”

A Knight’s Tale is also very, very funny. The dialogue in this film comes in two varieties: Maudlin nonsense that somehow works in the context of this adorable movie (see above), or perfectly crafted bon mots that are endlessly quotable. A surprising amount of it falls into that latter designation. “You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting,” is obviously a classic line. But I also rarely go a month without telling someone that “This is my word, and, as such, it is beyond contestation.”

And we haven’t even taken Geoff’s lavish introductions into account. You see, Geoff becomes William’s (er, excuse me, I mean Sir Ulrich’s) herald – basically his pre-tournament hype man – and he spares no verbal expense when announcing Ulrich’s arrival onto the playing field. Thus, we end up with classics like “We walk in the garden of his turbulence,” and “He spent a year in silence just to understand the sound of a whisper.” Bettany is having an absolute blast in this movie. In fact, everyone is having an absolute blast in this movie. There’s a bit where Tudyk is threatening to rip out Bettany’s intestines, and Tudyk is right on the verge of busting out laughing through the entire scene, even slipping into a half-chuckle a few times. Helgeland left that take in the movie, and why wouldn’t he? It just makes it more fun for the audience too.

Then there’s Ledger, not quite in his adult prime but just moving past his teenaged heartthrob era. This movie wasn’t the star-launching vehicle Sony had hoped, petering out at the box office to the tune of $117 million globally. Honestly, that was probably fine with Ledger, who always seemed uncomfortable with stardom and quickly pivoted to smaller, more challenging roles. (His follow-up film was the grim character study Monster’s Ball.) But, my god, he practically glows in this film, anchoring all his costars’ scenery-chewing with a simple and effortless grace. Box office be damned, he is a movie star here, fully committed to breathing a soul into a film that might’ve otherwise lacked a true emotional core.

As the director, Helgeland imbues A Knight’s Tale with a breezy “hey, let’s make a movie” feel. The camerawork never reaches Sam Raimi levels of kineticism during the joust tournaments, but Helgeland imbues the sequences with enough motion and energy to give the action a bit of style. And he stages the jousting in a way that allows the audience to feel the force of each brutal impact. From a craft perspective, the film’s highlight is almost certainly the formal dance that William attends with Jocelyn. Set to David Bowie’s “Golden Years” (probably the only tune the movie uses that might still be considered hip), the scene starts with some typical Medieval-style dancing, along with some orchestral work on the soundtrack that hints at the chords of the song, before cutting to Bowie’s actual track as Ledger, Sossamon, and the many extras break out into modern dance. It’s pure cinematic joy and sells the movie’s purposefully anachronistic mission statement better than anything else in the film. Honestly, I smile just thinking about it.

And that’s just one crowd-pleasing moment of many, from William earning a surprise knighthood from the benevolent Prince Edward (James Purefoy) after being outed as a fraud to his ultimate victory over the dickish Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), the film’s detestable villain. I’m not really spoiling anything here, because as I said, this is a fairly predictable sports movie. (Heck, there’s even a training montage set to War’s “Low Rider,” and at one point Kate imprints her armor with the Nike logo!) Even if you’ve never seen it before, you already know how A Knight’s Tale is going to play out. But that doesn’t make it any less effective as you watch. William spends the movie wondering whether “a man can change his stars.” Well, it turns out he can. He just needs some classic rock tunes, a group of lovable, half-crazy friends, and the guts not to tilt his head up when that lance is bearing down on him. So happy 20th, A Knight’s Tale. I’m going to crank up some AC/DC in your honor.

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