We crank things up a notch next with 2019’s time travel fantasy romance fluff The Knight Before Christmas which is wish-fulfilment tosh at its most glossy and nonsensical. In director Monika Mitchell’s film, a 14th century knight is catapulted through time to 2019 Ohio because unlucky-in-love Brooke (Vanessa Hugdens) really needs a man.
Straight off the bat, I’m constantly irked that Josh Whitehouse’s time-displaced ‘Sir Cole’ never seems as in awe of the technological advances of the 21st century as he should be. The dude never questions electricity, motor vehicles, lightbulbs or any of those things he would clearly never have seen before and also has no problem with operating a modern shower, thus allowing the audience to ogle his sweet, chiselled bod. I must point out that Sir Cole refers to his own timeline as “Days of Yore”, as if that’s just what 14th century people called it.
He also never does anything all that ‘knight-ish’ other than ride a horse near the end. He keeps threatening to take his sword out and fight but never actually does it. Harumph. What’s the point of having him be a knight? Why not just make him a prince like in every other silly film like this? Did they really just do this so they could make that rubbish pun the film’s title?
Brooke has some laughs teaching Cole about the wonders of the modern world and, sure enough, he learns everything he needs to know about 21st century America by just watching TV for a bit. This is some seriously lazy, half-assed shit going on here, though everyone is really, really ridiculously good-looking and it is a Christmas film, so I guess I need to cut it some slack. This feels like the sort of film that might go down really well with lonely women after they’ve downed a bottle of wine – don’t ask questions, just adore the cute, lovely, lovestruck people. Hey - maybe one day this could happen to you.
Nothing really all that riveting happens, save for one very mildly exciting scene involving the rescue of a kid on a frozen lake. However, even that part doesn’t fully deliver on its promise - when we see cracking ice, the audience demands that someone fall through it so that they can then be rescued dramatically, maybe with a bit of desperate CPR thrown in. What we don’t want to see is our handsome hero on his belly, prompting the stricken child to “crawl like the slowest slug you’ve ever seen”. This film seriously wastes the opportunity of its premise - I want to see our time-travelling paladin getting into barfights, trying to burn goths as witches and picking fights with cars and stuff. Not watching a bit of telly and crawling around like a slug.
I watch this on a day where, after a power cut, our broadband cuts out for what feels like the millionth time this year, so I’m irate. I apologise if I’ve been overly unkind to this film, though I do feel like it deserves a hard time for being so uninspired and really, really dumb. Sure, there’s lots of pleasant moralising about doing good for others, all against a pleasingly wintery festive backdrop. Overall, though, it’s just too square and uninvolving to leave any sort of impression. I’m quite certain that this will also get a sequel because the world is a mad place that I don’t quite understand anymore.
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