A Knight's Tale is an oddball, sometimes awe-inspiring story of a rookie discovering he is the stuff of which legends are made.

Part road trip, part exuberant action adventure, the film is a rich, romantic, raucous ride during which a young squire embarks on a quest.

Writer/director/producer Brian Helgeland, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for LA Confidential, says: "We wanted to create a period piece that stayed fair to the period but felt contemporary.

I wanted to make the Middle Ages feel as alive as they were to the people who inhabited them.

These people weren't living in an archaic time.

They were in the present."

Heath Ledger, fresh from his star-making performance as Mel Gibson's brave son in The Patriot, stars as William, a fearless, sometimes foolhardy, young man who carries upward mobility to unheard of heights.

The Australian-born star says: "What really appealed to me is not so much that William changes his stars, but what he learns in doing so.

He goes for the gold, the nobility and fame, but ultimately discovers that the friends who surround and support him are the real stars in his life.

The real nobility is finding your head and your heart."

That band of friends includes serious, soft-hearted Roland (Mark Addy), hot-headed, flame-haired Wat (Alan Tudyk) and unemployed writer Geoff Chaucer (Paul Bettany).

Helgeland adds: "By the time William is ennobled on paper by royalty, he has already been ennobled in his heart.

This is a fairytale with a happy ending."