" Movie makes monkey mad. Monkey swears, curses, and yells at the screen. DVD finally makes Monkey so mad that he throws heavy object at TV. Monkey has to go buy new TV. "

      Title: A Knight’s Tale by Columbia Pictures

      Format: DVD Movie

      Reviewing Monkey: Dungapult

      The Hype: You know what’s wrong with all those medieval knights movies? None of them have hip modern references and 80’s era music sound tracks…or at least so thought Columbia. Thus, as you might expect, A Knight’s Tale tries hard to fill that void.

      What This Monkey Thought...

      Story: The movie begins with the main character, William, finding the knight to whom he’s squired laying dead against a tree and smelling quite foul. So, desperate to put a little meat on the table for himself and his cohorts, Will jumps into his master’s armor and does the tournament’s last joust in the knight’s place. He wins, barely, and decides that this is a great chance to give up pommel polishing and promote him to the rank of knight-errant permanently. Much wackiness ensues.
          So, as you might guess, plot isn’t the movies strong point. But, though it might sound very dull, the light hearted premise could have been exactly what this movie needed to be darned entertaining. Unfortunately though, what could be a great no brainer about a young hot head and his need to joust with his pole becomes a painfully melodramatic piece of drivel when the emotionally unbalanced love interest and scorned villain are introduced. Once that happens, things devolve into the most basic, bland, and trite of love stories…Boy meets girl. Bad guy meets girl. Girl chooses boy over bad guy. Bad guy does everything possible to kill/maim/destroy/and make life miserable for boy. Boy triumphs in an overly dramatic fashion at the end.
          And that unimaginative pile of moldy poo led to another all to familiar story: Movie makes monkey mad. Monkey swears, curses, and yells at the screen. DVD finally makes Monkey so mad that he throws heavy object at TV. Monkey has to go buy new TV. 1 out of 5

      Acting: You know, the worse the writing is the harder it becomes to tell if the actors are doing a good job…And in this piece of crap it seems as though it may be damned near impossible tell. Until you stop looking at any of the drama and focus on the comedy…which is fantastic! Not so much the writing of it, but the slapstick, light hearted, deadpan delivery of it by the cast. Though the majority of the movie is painful, the wit and humor is truly wonderful and will help you to find jewels of chuckles between 2 solid hours of doldrums. 3.5 out of 5

      Action: All in all, the action really is killer. Good joust scenes, fast and flashy broadsword fights, cool bumps, and some great plays on historical combat. That being said, though, the whole effect is almost ruined by the inclusion of crap gimmick gags throughout all of the fighting…But, the action ends up being good enough to rise above it. 4 out of 5

      Visuals and Directing: On a purely astethic level, the movie really was pretty cool. Lots of nice backgrounds, decent armor, and wonderfully understated costuming. Beyond that, however, the movie is poop. From the over abundance of pop references (like medieval dance scenes devolving into would be rock ballad waltzes) to the complete lack of story telling continuity...the horrible directing in A Knight’s Tale makes it near unwatchable. 2 out of 5

      Sound Track: As I’ve already said, a major push for A Knight’s Tale was to incorporate as much pop culture as possible. The effect of this is a ton of early to mid 80’s songs shoved into the movie at incredibly inappropriate time. And while I personally found Queen’s "We Will Rock You" to be an appropriate theme to a jousting scene, inclusion of songs like "Takin’ Care of Business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "Get Ready" by Rare Earth, "Eye Conqueror" by Third Eye Blind, the Thin Lizzy rendition of "The Boys Are Back In Town" really, really, really take you out of the movie. It’s strange- you’d think having a bunch of songs I actually like on a soundtrack would make it more appealing, but the complete lack of appropriateness makes the sound track clash violently with the tone of the movie rather than accenting it. 1 out of 5

      DVD Extras: With the exception of bloopers, the DVD packs pretty much everything you’d expect in and not much that would surprise you. Deleted Scenes, Commentary, Making of Feature, etc. Add it all up and, if you enjoyed the movie, you’ll probably be glad it’s there. But, if you’re like me and you really couldn’t have cared less, it’s nothing you’ll even bother to check out. 3 out of 5

      Value vs. Price: Even as a hard-core sword-swinging psychopath, I don’t think there’s anything here that warrants a $20 purchase. It’s just not that good. 2 out of 5

      The Verdict:

Pretty much a crappy movie with a couple of good jokes, A Knight’s Tale should tuck its tail between its legs and crawl in a whole somewhere. Horrible writing, crappy direction, and a worthless story keep this from being anything but only the most marginally entertaining.

      The Good: Pretty cool fighting and it’s funny in parts.

      The Bad: Add all the good parts up and you get a total of 20 minutes.

      The Overall Ugly: With so many good medieval movies out there, I can’t imagine why I’d want to go back and watch this. I’d avoid it.

      What it's Worth: Rental if you’re really, really, really, bored.