It was actually a pretty good flick-in an offbeat way. The medieval theme mixed in with modern pop music was kind of neat.
In any event, the chick who placed Jocelyn was pretty hot.
The late Heath Ledger wasn’t a bad actor-so sad he died so young.
In any event, it did show medieval life as it probably was-most people dressed in rags …and filthy towns.
Did the critics pan the movie?
No, looking at Rotten Tomatoes, the reviews were mixed. The Boston Globe, Detroit Free Press, Roger Ebert, and Slate.com liked it. USAToday, New York Magazine, and TIME didn’t like it. The New York Times didn’t like it, but didn’t hate it either.
See for yourself:
Notice the user review is 80%. Most people like the film because it is fun and doesn’t take itself seriously. I enjoyed the film.
Having beautiful people in it helps as well.
[hijack] I’ve always liked Terry Lawson’s articles for the Detroit Free Press. I didn’t always agree with him, but he was straightforward in his reviews and accepted movies as they tried to be and not compare each to some Platonic ideal. I knew the Freep let him go a few years ago in a budget crunch but I always assumed he would find another gig. I tried googling him to see if he had any more recent reviews, but his last one appears to be from 2007. 
[/hijack]
That movie was ahead of its time and it is underappreciated. Probably because it was marketed poorly and was also released too soon after the Sean Connery / Richard Gere snooze-fest with a similar name.
Agree about Shannyn Sossamon being beautiful. Probably her career never really took off because she picked the wrong spelling for her -pseudonym (is that was they’re called?).
I like it too. There are times when the music thing doesn’t work for me but other times when it does. Overall it’s fun to watch with numerous good performances and no real duds.
My husband laughs at me because I can take or leave Heath Ledger but I WANT his adorable roan horse!
(side note, Heath rides very well in this movie, he has great position and sits very confidently).
I recall I used this movie in some previous “Poor Casting Choices” thread…the three primary actresses all looked nearly identical to me and I had trouble keeping them straight during the movie, though I do appreciate that they are all smoking hotties.
Agreed with the OP, an enjoyable fun movie.
I remember this movie as being fairly well-received by the critics, at least as far as summer action/comedies go.
I saw it when it showed on campus that fall, and in the dining hall afterward the major criticism from everyone was that Jocelyn was unlikeable and that the movie seemed to be setting up Kate the blacksmith as the real love interest but instead left her totally unattached at the end of the movie. And while Shannyn Sossamon is certainly an attractive woman, she has a very “modern”, mixed European/Asian look that struck me as totally wrong for a medieval French (?) noblewoman. If the rest of the cast had been more diverse then I would have accepted it as just part of the movie’s tweaked version of history, like the use of modern music, but the other major characters were all very white.
It and some other movies spawned a lawsuit over reviews:
[QUOTE]
Newsweek revealed in June 2001 that print ads for at least four movies released by Columbia Pictures, including A Knight’s Tale and The Animal (2001), contained glowing comments from a film reviewer who did not exist. The fake critic, David Manning, was created by a Columbia employee who worked in the advertising department. “Manning” was misrepresented as a reviewer for a newspaper in a small Connecticut town.
[QUOTE]
My recollection is that it was a modest surprise hit.
–Cliffy
It did a U.S. box office gross of $56 million – not huge, but certainly not a flop. Always hard to say, with Hollywood accounting, but I would imagine that it made at least a little money.
I enjoyed it quite a bit; I think that we went to see it on opening weekend.
This is my all-time favorite movie… the one I pop in and watch when I need a pick up, and know most all of the lines to. I honestly never paid attention to the reviews because I didn’t care how anyone else felt about it! 
Hello Again- Agreed about the roan, and Heath DID ride very well in this movie, but I would still have taken Heath in a heartbeat…
That’s the one where the princess wore the see-through blouse and the hero didn’t didn’t end up with the smoking-hot blacksmith girl? Granted, the blouse may have had something to do with it… Oh, and Ralph Bellamy and Wash were in it.
Thus endeth my memory of the movie.
It was a competently made entertaining movie that was easy to forget. What I remember most about it was the modern soundtrack.
This is one of those movies I can rewatch over and over. It’s just plain fun. And I love, love, love Paul Bettany.
One weird thing about the movie for me is that the best scene in the movie, in my opinion, ended up on the cutting room floor. If you get the DVD, check out the speech Chaucer gives when William is in stocks. It’s a great piece of writing and acting.
Great movie. I really like the commentary track on the DVD as well.
I read an interview with Brian Helgeland where he hoped to make a sequel, but then Heath Ledger died soon after and that put paid to that.
I guess I’m in the minority. I hate this movie.
I enjoyed it, and I also liked Brian Helgeland’s (the writer/director) followup movie two years later with the same three leads: The Order. Totally unrelated movie.
Well, A Knight’s Tale came out in 2001, and Ledger died in 2008, having worked on 12 other movies after A Knight’s Tale, so “soon after” may be a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, it may well be that they were still in talks to do a sequel when Ledger died.
I thought it was meh. I certainly didn’t like the obviously anachronistic soundtrack and the one scene that sticks in my head is the crowd stomping along with Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Unfortunately, this kind of things seems to have become a trend.
First Knight? That came out in 1995, which was like six years before A Knight’s Tale.
Yes, pseudonym is accurate, but for actors, “stage name” is more common.
The only thing that she actually changed was the y. Her real name is Shannon Sossamon. Not a huge difference. According to Wikipedia, she started spelling it as “Shannyn” when she was a teenager.