Anachronistic tale of a peasant defies the usual noble requirement to undetaking jousting as a knight to the tune of a modern soundtrack.

It's a very populist idea, throwing any real attempts at accuracy aside in favor of highly accessible tunes and characters with modern viewpoints and relatively modern speech. With your typical underdog story at its heart, the intention is largely just to have fun.

Is it fun? Does it live up to its promises? At the start, the formula works and is interesting, the audience for the first joust stomping and clapping along to Queen's "We Will Rock You". Once we get into the story proper, though, the anachronisms become mere decoration, and mainly serve as distraction. A much better (and frenetic) melding of story and style can be found in Moulin Rouge - it may be a little unfair to compare A Knight's Tale to such a groundbreaking film, but the fact is that the imaginative setup is not properly followed up. We don't need the actors to break out in song, but it wouldn't have hurt.

So then the film must rest upon the shoulders of its plot. It's well calculated, but also flatly predictable. The usual high production values of a studio film cover up the problems a little bit, but overall there's nothing original here.