A Knight's Tale (2001)
Where do you suppose Heath Ledger learned the homoerotic male-bonding skills that served him so well in Brokeback Mountain? I'm guessing it was in A Knight's Tale, the film that suggests that all the underdog sports-movie clichés you know and love are at least 600 years old. Illustrating that notion is the movie's chief gimmick, the pairing of jousting scenes with a deliberately anachronistic soundtrack of '70s stadium-rock fist-pumpers like ''We Will Rock You'' and ''Takin' Care of Business.'' That's so stupid it's brilliant, and it's the chief reason I can't help but watch the movie whenever I stumble across it on cable.
The other reason is the grab bag of oddly quirky and hilarious performances, including that of scene stealer Paul Bettany, as future Canterbury Tales author Geoffrey Chaucer. If Ledger's hero is a jock with the soul of a poet, Bettany's Chaucer is a poet with the soul of fight announcer Michael Buffer. A couple years ago, Paul Bettany told me that people still recognize him most often from Knight's Tale, in which his Chaucer makes a memorable entrance trudging down a country road after having gambled away all his clothes; Bettany said fans who recognized him on the street tended to shout, ''Hey, naked guy!'' Even without clothes, Bettany is a stitch. So is the movie. — Gary Susman, senior writer
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