Hey, I forgot that “Movie Thoughts” was even a thing I had started doing on this site. I think I did two and then forgot about them. Well, I want to break up the flow of Phone Guys being the only thing going up, so let’s talk about a movie I watched the other day.

Today’s Movie Thoughts are about Knightriders.

I don’t actually want to get too into the details of the film itself, but I should give a little bit of a summary: This is a movie about a group of travelling performers whose medium of performance is motorcycle jousting. There’s a bunch of drama about who gets to be in charge of this motorcycle troupe, and there’s a lot of allusions to the tales of King Arthur. That’s the basic deal. But the Movie Thoughts that occurred to me while watching were about how much I wish the movie had been dumber.

I’m not going to say Knightriders is a bad movie, but it isn’t a good enough movie that I enjoyed sitting through it when I wanted a dumb action movie.

What I mean is that it turns out that Knightriders exists in some sort of valley of quality that actually makes me find it less enjoyable. It’s in the Mid-Quality Zone. I thought that the motorcycle knight movie was going to be stupid. Instead, it turned out to be a movie delivered a drama film plot that just happened to have motorcycle jousting amid actual character work and attempts to take the plot seriously. These things would be good in a good drama, but Knightriders doesn’t break through the barrier to be a good drama. It’s just middling. And the fact the film’s length seemed better suited for a compelling drama than for a dumb action movie meant that I was getting more of what I didn’t want.

The lesson is this: We need more movies about motorcycle fighting. There needs to be enough variety in that concept that there are motorcycle fight movies for whatever mood the viewer happens to be in.