Hey Folks, Harry here... Now many of you might remember that I took a trip to Prague to visit this set... and man oh man... the film is quite a ways off from release, but it seems to have the same troubles that I thought it would have when Helgeland showed me pieces of it back months ago. The problem is... the film is a bizarre marriage of modern Rock-N-Roll Arena style music... and ancient Jousting and middle ages fighting. My advice on seeing the footage was to get the best Rock N Roll composer in the known world... some one like Eric Clapton was the first to leap to mind... and get the rest of the music in tune with the Arena stuff. Otherwise, audience members like Max California would say... "I don't think the weird mixture works" And without the great score by someone with a talent for Rock N Roll scoring... the film will feel to anyone like two separate films. HE MUST GET HIS COMPOSER in place. From the sound of it, while Max California did not like it, there were some that did. Saying that... there is still A LOT of work for Brian to do on this one it seems.... BEWARE OF SPOILERS... Max is quite SPOILERY!
Hi Harry
I went to a test screening tonight of IN SHINING ARMO(U)R (formerly called A KNIGHT'S TALE), starring Heath Ledger and written/directed by Brian Helgeland (wonder if they discussed Mel Gibson at all...?!?). I guess this is an entry in next summer's blockbuster race, since its supposed to open in June. This was a workprint with the occasional bad lighting and some temp music (including the American Beauty theme). OK there will be SPOILERS and such in this review...
The tone of this movie is totally crazy. Within minutes Queen's "We will rock you" is playing over the soundtrack, and people on the screen are dancing along with it. Whoa...that's a pretty ballsy thing to do, I'm not sure if it totally works or not, but it was certainly an interesting way to go. Lots of other pop songs are sprinkled throughout the movie, such as "Lowrider"!!! and some Rolling Stones and AC/DC. The movie alternates between broad comedy, action and romance, and for me it never really successfully blended these elements; one minute Heath and his buddies would be cracking crude jokes, and the next scene would be a bone-crunching joust followed by a romantic moment. This threw me for a loop considering that Brian "LA Confidential / Payback" was at the helm. I went in expecting a hardcore Gladiator-style action-fest, but its more like Gladiator for kids, softened with jokes and cutesy PG-13 love.
Alrighty, the plot. Yes...Heath is a young 14th century peasant who pretends to be a knight so he can enter a jousting contest, just so he can afford to eat something. After winning his first contest, he decides that he's good at it so along with his two comedy sidekicks, Mark Addy and some other red-head guy they set off around France taking part in jousting tournaments. (I should mention that the red head serves absolutely no purpose in this movie...Heath already has Mark Addy as a comedy sidekick. Two comedy sidekicks is a no-no). They encounter a naked Geoffrey Chaucer and take him with them too.(I thought this part was funny, but nobody else in the theatre seemed to. A bit too literary for some, perhaps!).
Anyhoo, we go from jousting contest to jousting contest, and the token love interest is introduced, a princess who looks like she just walked straight out of a California college campus. Rufus Sewell plays the sneering villain, Count Aldemar, and his was the performance I enjoyed the most. He's a plain old mustache-twirling evil doer who makes fun of Heath, and announces that he has never been defeated in jousting. (So guess what happens at the end, kids!!!). Just in case we missed the fact that he's evil, he dresses in black, rides a black horse, wears black armor, and has black hair.
So Rufus defeats Heath in a joust, sneers at him some more, and then the film kicks into romantic gear, as Heath woos the bimbo princess, and we're subjected to wacky dancing set to Bowie's "Golden years"; perhaps Helgeland was taking a leaf out of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. The romance goes on and on, as Rufus goes off to fight a war, and Heath wins all the jousting contests in his absence.
Rufus gets pissed off, and we get lots of close-ups of him looking EEEVIL in between all the lovey-dovey stuff. Heath has a tearful reunion with his long lost daddy who's gone blind. Rufus discovers that Heath is not a real knight and plans to have him arrested.
OK long story short...there's a jousting showdown between Rufus and Heath...Rufus is so EEEVIL that he puts a blade at the end of his wooden lance (jousting lances are supposed to be all wood). Heath gets wounded, but carries on anyway! Without armor! Yay! And that's about it. Girl is gotten. Villain is defeated. Did I enjoy it? Not really. It was very predictable and the comedy was lame. It ran over two hours, and I think it needs a little editing to tighten it up a little. Cut out some of the romantic stuff :)
Anyway, the audience were laughing a lot (and I had the misfortune to sit next to some goon who had to laugh every five seconds, even if nothing funny was actually happening...dontcha hate that?), and they even cheered at the end, but I did see several people walk out, so it definitely drew a hit-and-miss reaction from the crowd. My girlfriend wants me to mention that she thought it was "cute" though, so maybe its more of a girly flick ;)
Max California
