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STUDIO: Columbia
MSRP: $27.98
RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 132 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Commentary by Brian Helgeland and Paul Bettany
• Production notes
• Theatrical trailer(s)
• HBO Making Of Special
• 11 Behind-The-Scenes Featurettes
• Deleted Scenes with Filmmaker’s Intros
• Music Video
• DVD ROM

Sometimes a movie just looks so bad that you don’t even need to go see it. And A Knight’s Tale looked like one of those. Heath Ledger as a jouster in ye olde England with a classic rock soundtrack? Yeesh.

Except that the film was written and directed by Brian Helgeland, the guy who wrote L.A. Confidential. And the trailer looked really fun…

A Hard Day’s Knight.

The Flick

William Thatcher (Heath "The Patriot" Ledger) is a squire who has lived his whole life in poverty so squalid it makes today’s homeless look middle class. When the knight he squires for suddenly dies (he "shites himself to death"), William takes on his identity to participate in a joust so that he and his companions Randolph (Mark "The Full Monty" Addy) and Wat (Alan "Hearts in Atlantis" Tudyk) can win some money to eat.

It turns out William is quite good at the joust, and wants to continue competing – except that one has to be of noble birth to participate.

Wat, of the house of Shaggy.

Enter Chaucer (yes, that Chaucer), who acts as William’s herald and supplies him with a phony background as Ulrich von Lichtenstein. William becomes a crowd pleasing favorite as he travels Europe, and gains the attention of the evil Count Adhemar (Rufus "Dark City" Sewell) as well as the beautiful Jocelyn (newcomer Shannyn Sossamon).

Heath Ledger in a make-up test for Cast Away.

Once you know the set up, you can be pretty certain you know where the rest of the story is headed. A Knight’s Tale is pretty much a sports movie transported back in time to when hygiene was considered witchery. As a sports movie, A Knight’s Tale works marvelously – it’s easy to root and cheer for these characters.

"Never speak of Bless the Child again!"

A Knight’s Tale is a blast. It’s a big fun movie that never gets dumb. It is gleefully anachronistic, with characters speaking in modern terms, dancing to David Bowie, and cheering to Queen’s "We Will Rock You." If you can roll with that central conceit, you’ll spend 2 hours with a smile on your face.

"He was on Roar?!"

Helgeland has gathered an incredibly likeable cast, with Paul Bettany’s Chaucer and Tudyk’s Wat being my favorites. There’s a great chemistry between the main hero characters, and you can tell that they had a blast making the movie. If you walk in with an open mind, I think it’s impossible to not have a good time.

When I saw the movie in the theatres, I thought it might be a little long. A second viewing at home shows that the movie never overstays its welcome. A second or third look only improves the movie because you’re already sold on the anachronism and the great characters.

Chaucer joins Ye Olde Nation’s Punched.

Sometimes you have to not judge a movie by the trailer or commercials or (utterly awful) poster. A Knight’s Tale is just one of those. A triumph of fun, A Knight’s Tale is two guaranteed fun hours.

9.2 out of 10

"He’s got a HUGE… talent."

The Look

A Knight’s Tale looks better on DVD than it did when I saw it in theaters. The 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer is pristine, with colors so crisp you can taste them. You know when DVD reviews talk about "black levels"? Look at this DVD to see what they mean. And detail is spectacular – which is sort of unfortunate when Chaucer is naked.

9.8 out of 10

Boogie Knights.

The Noise

Again, fantastic. I don’t have one of those reference quality systems – you know, the ones that cost the GNP of Guam and can kill you if the bass levels are off? But even with my "only decent" sound system, A Knight’s Tale was a JOY to listen to. The 5.1 mix is very strong, and makes great use of all the channels. You are AT the World Championship of Jousting. Just thank God this one isn’t in Smell-o-vision.

9.8 out of 10

I don’t know why she’s smiling – this is centuries before Right Guard was invented.

The Goodies

IT JUST GETS BETTER! What a disc Columbia has put together here – really good movie, wonderful transfer and sound, and a host of extras that really live up to the Special Edition tag.

The commentary on this is reason enough to buy the disc. Director Helgeland and Paul Bettany (Chaucer) are old friends, and have a couple of beers and enjoy themselves. You get basic info that you’re looking for, and also a lot of laughs as they poke fun of the movie and themselves (my favorite running gag: Helgeland is upset that Sony’s research department didn’t let him know that they didn’t have rock music in the 1470s). These two give Kevin Smith a run for his money in the great commentary race.

In a little known medieveal torture, one’s head is replaced with a Tribble…

There are 11 featurettes, each of which are actually interesting an informative. I just wish that they had been stitched together as one long documentary, but I suppose Columbia is keeping those without attention spans in mind.

There are six deleted scenes, which you can watch on their own or with commentary (by Helgeland, who is talking funny because Heath Ledger knocked his tooth out). these are good scenes, but the movie is already long enough.

There’s also a lame HBO First Look, the trailer (and a Final Fantasy trailer) some filmographies, and a video for the Robbie Williams and Queen rendition of "We Are the Champions." And for all you DVD-ROM folks, we have a weblink and a screen saver.

Everything you could ask for in a special edition is here – and good.

10 out of 10

The Artwork

Ugh. This cover sucks. It is the movie poster, with two jousting guys added at the bottom. The poster sucked, and this cover sucked. Of special note as sucking extra hard: the "He will rock you" tag line. Looking at this art, you can understand why peoplel had no idea how good this movie is.

4.0 out of 10

Overall: 9.4 out of 10

9.26.03
By Wrappin’ Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

Alongside Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers, Bubba Ho-Tep was one of my favorite movies to see last year with a crowd. It was a packed house at San Diego Comic Con, everybody was pumped and ready to see “Bruuuuuuuuce” and Don Coscarelli was the one who let us sneak into the theater. I’d been a fan of Joe Lansdale for quite some time and thought his Nacogdoches-spun tales of Texas crime and western horror were quite cool, actually. Seeing his work get together with not only Bruce Campbell, but also Phantasm man Coscarelli was a dream come true. The fact that the movie didn’t, thereby, turn into a complete disappointment was a big damn plus, too. If you like any of these three guys, go see Bubba Ho-Tep and you won’t be disappointed.

Staying rigidly faithful to the short story (amazingly so), Bubba Ho-Tep has one of the most original concepts you can imagine (a point echoed not too long ago in a box description written by Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times). You see, Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) didn’t die, but got sick of “being Elvis.” So, he switched places with an impersonator late in his career and that’s who died on the toilet in Graceland. The real Elvis wandered around for years until finally ending up in a rest home in Texas, looking back on his life, wondering if he made the right decision (and missing Lisa Marie), and slowly dying.

Also at the rest home is John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis). Well, no, it’s not JFK really, but a senile old man who thinks the government faked his death and “turned him black” so that no one would believe him. The amazing conceit of both the short story and the movie is that since you’re seeing this through the eyes of Elvis, you think that, of course JFK is crazy. You accept that Elvis is Elvis and he really did switch places with an impersonator. The closer reading tells us that, well, like JFK, maybe he created his own past-memory just like his presidential pal and is just as crazy and senile.

Like Herb Gardner’s seminal play I’m Not Rappaport, which Davis starred in the film of, an interesting movie could be made out of these two guys hooking up on their own just unraveling each other’s past Big Fish-style. But no, Lansdale just wants to use these characters to his own end – setting them against an old-age Egyptian mummy who rises from a nearby bog to kill off the elderly patients at the rest home, one by one.

WHAT???

Yes, now THAT is a plot. What makes this film and the story so good (Goddamn, Coscarelli, you really knocked this one out of the fucking park, fella) is that you can do different things – you can make this a straight comedy about a wacky mummy, you can do the horror version of it full of mummy-scares OR, you can do the movie about how society doesn’t really care if the elderly die today because of a mummy of three weeks from now due to kidney failure or something, so it’s up to these wizened old bastards to fight this threat on their own. Coscarelli deftly weaves all three things together, balances the thing on the head of a pin, and keeps it up for the whole movie. I shed tears at the end, for God’s sake.

First off, Ossie Davis as JFK is just brilliant. You needed an actor with real chops to take on that part and they actually got him. Davis lends a real credibility to the old man and makes him completely dimensional. Yes, he may be crazy, but he’s also just a sweet old man who doesn’t want to die quite yet. He has regrets, but has pretty much lost his mind many moons ago. But, you don’t feel sorry for him.

Matching him (and making for pretty solid chemistry) is Bruce Campbell. Yes, it’s a fandom-wide joke at this point that Bruce Campbell is God. We’d suggest him for every role from Superman to a Peter Greenaway production of Woyzeck and, well, mean it. Is this really just because of Evil Dead, Brisco and Xena? Well, who knows – he’s been good in pretty much everything he’s done and even turned out to be a great writer. He always comes out for the fans, has probably had more photos taken with him and some Big Tattooed Guy than anyone else on the planet (well, maybe Robert Englund or Gene Simmons) and is just a good fellow.

And, every so often, we’re reminded that the guy CAN ACT.

In Bubba Ho-Tep, the cult persona that is “The Bruce” fades away into, well, Elvis. He goes to town and gives a great, subtle performance, likely the kind of thing that makes Lucky McKee not stunt-cast him in The Woods, but give him an actual part. Bruce Campbell can act, he’s not just a one-note cult actor and it’s too bad Hollywood just doesn’t realize that.

And guess what? Don Coscarelli can direct. I enjoyed Bubba Ho-Tep and I know I’m not alone. Unlike movies that claim to be “valentine’s to the fans,” Bubba Ho-Tep is not because it stars Bruce Campbell or is by a great horror director or comes from a fan-favorite novelist, but is because it’s a solid horror movie that challenges the audience to realize it’s firing on all cylinders, has a lot going on in its head and is a well-made movie.

The film opened last weekend in Seattle and kicked ass. This weekend, it opens in New York City and next weekend, in Los Angeles. From there, it’ll continue its expansion across the country depending on how it does at the box office. This is like one of the few times where the fans coming out and buying a ticket can make a difference (no, I’m not talking Gerry Adams “an armalite and a ballot box” difference, but hey). Unlike most such occasions, it’s actually a good movie that could stand on its own two feet.

8.0 out of 10