Variety's Todd McCarthy comments "Rarely has a period costume picture been quite so craven in courting a young audience as "A Knight's Tale." From celebrants at an elegant 14th century ball breaking into wild modern dancing to the strains of David Bowie's "Golden Years" to the prince of Wales shouting a clenched-fist "Yes!," this survey of the European jousting season, circa 1360, imposes contempo behavior, phraseology and attitudes onto inhabitants of the Middle Ages with gleeful abandon. Clearly designed as a star-making vehicle for young Aussie actor Heath Ledger and positively swilling in its deliberate anachronisms, Brian Helgeland's boisterous, profoundly silly actioner will deeply divide audiences; traditionalists and older viewers in general will scoff, while pop culture addicts will no doubt go with the flow, enough so to give Sony a hit." Jami Bernard in the New York Post calls it "charmingly spirited," while Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail calls it "a bouncy pop song of a movie." For Lou Lumenick in the New York Post, the film amounts to "a solidly entertaining popcorn movie." And Roger Ebert remarks that it has "an innocence and charm that grow on you." But Bob Longino in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls the movie a "tale that didn't need to be told ... so Three-Stooges silly that even the horses look embarrassed." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times maintains that there simply isn't enough shtick in the film and criticizes the "weak performances" by the two leads, Heath Ledger and Shannyn Sossamon. Glenn Whipp, the Los Angeles Daily News critic, finds a couple of scenes funny -- but that's about all. Otherwise, he says, it's a "frustratingly flawed, overlong epic."