Irony overshadowed the whole experience. The day before, unbeknownst to us, the Canadian government issued an allergy warning for the ice cream we bought. No kidding. Course, we didn't hear about it until a few days later. Ooops. Fortunately, nobody who ate it suffered from any issue relating to eggs.
We hunkered down with the Heath Ledger movie. After eating takeout pizza we dove into the ice cream. Yeah, pizza, for the holiday. Special days aren't meant to be chalked full of nutritional foods. I suppose that goes for movie quality as well, since Knight came across as typical Hollywood cookie cutter feel-good fair. Yeah.
Just like in Smith's Karate Kid, everything is black and white; there's the good guy who must be the underdog and the bad guy who always has the upper hand, whether it be through class or money or both. Then, of course, we need a pretty girl who immediately falls for our hero.
Good thing I got busy stuffing my face, it distracted me from the feel-good crap on the TV screen. Sure, Ledger provided some eye-candy and Karate Kid came across as a tourist brochure for the shiny bits of China, but the fact that these two movies had the exact same formula kind of ruined it. I mean, hey, if at least one of them could have had even the tiniest bit of creativity to it, that would have made everything okay.
The only area they did get creative with was in the whole Suspension of Disbelief department, as expected. Smith's character, a complete newbie to martial arts, miraculously spars a seasoned Kung Fu champ and avoids ultimate defeat. Never mind that they got the style of martial arts wrong, but I guess if they named it something other than what they did, people wouldn't get that it was a remake with a few superficial changes.
And poor Ledger, fighting with a knight who's obviously using an improper jousting lance. Even the crowd could easily see that it wasn't regulation. Such oversights must occur for flimsy and drab plots to crawl towards the required ending of white defeating black. Ho hum.
From yawn-inducing stories to bland ice cream that didn't have the texture of any of the goodies it boasted: chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate brownies, or real cream. And the chocolate taste was muted at best. Disappointed, I double checked the ingredients to make sure it even had any in it and found traces of 'cocoa butter' and 'cocoa powder.' Yay.
Ratings:
A Knight's Tale / The Karate Kid / Irresistibles Cookie Dough: 6 / 10 - It's best to simply list them altogether, since they deserve about the same score. Knight gets a high number for the shots of Ledger and the jousting scenes and, last but not least, Paul Bettany's naked butt shots. Karate gets a decent ranking because of the pretty scenery and Jackie Chan--I'm a big fan. Cookie did better than expected because well, we already had low expectations.
