A knight's tale

A knight's tale

A Knight's Tale is a 2001 American quasi-medieval adventure comedy-romance film. It was written, produced, and directed by Brian Helgeland; it stars Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon, Mark Addy, Alan Tudyk, Rufus Sewell, Laura Fraser, Paul Bettany (as Geoffrey Chaucer), and James Purefoy (as Sir Thomas Colville / Edward the Black Prince). This article is about the 2001 film. For the story from The Canterbury Tales, see The Knight's Tale.

Tale

Director Brian Helgeland says in the DVD Special Edition's commentary that he had intended to show what Geoffrey Chaucer might have been doing that inspired him to write The Canterbury Tales during the six months in which Chaucer seems to have gone missing in 1372.Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 58% based on reviews from 148 critics. The website's critical consensus says, "Once you get past the anachronism, A Knight's Tale becomes a predictable, if spirited, Rocky on horseback."

Inspired by "The Canterbury Tales," as well as the early life of William Marshall (later First Earl of Pembroke), this is the story of William, a young squire with a gift for jousting. After his master dies suddenly, the squire hits the road with his cohorts Roland and Wat. On the journey, they stumble across an unknown writer, Chaucer. William, lacking a proper pedigree, convinces Chaucer to forge genealogy documents that will pass him off as a knight. With his newly-minted history in hand, the young man sets out to prove himself a worthy knight at the country's jousting competition, and finds romance along the way. But as the movie continued, it suddenly dawned on me - I wasn't hating the movie at all! On an intellectual level, I should have been booing and throwing stuff at the screen but there's something about the sheer verve and energy of "A Knight's Tale" that just drags you in on an emotional level. (Source: www.imdb.com)