Comedy. PG-13. At area theaters.
Renaissance fairs are the ultimate expressions of fandom. Medieval history buffs, chivalry and courtly love fans gather and put on a show by dressing up like lords, ladies and vassals, and stay in character as they run jousts and sell turkey legs to those who come to take in the spectacle.
It’s a good setting for a comedy, as the makers of “All’s Faire in Love” realized. It’s colorful and easy to make fun of, like anything whose fans take it too seriously. So it’s a pity there aren’t more laughs in “All’s Faire,” a generic romantic comedy.
Christina Ricci plays Kate Miller, whom we meet as she ends a corporate job interview by stripping out of her business suit. “I’m an actress. I like drama, comedy, show tunes!”
Her plan B? Go join her pal Jo (Louise Griffiths), in costume, at Ye Olde Times Renaissance Pleasure Faire.
Then, there’s Will, the arrogant, class-cutting college quarterback (Owen Benjamin, miscast). He’s cut his Renaissance Lit class so often that his teacher (Cedric the Entertainer) assigns him three weeks of work as a peasant “fetch boy” at the faire, where the professor dresses up as a knight.
Will and Kate learn the hierarchy of the faire, who is queen (Ann-Margret, good) and who is just a little too “into” the festival and their characters. That would be most everybody.
There also are romantic attachments and semi-rude sexual moments that put this comedy in that uncomfortable not-clean-enough-for-kids/ not-funny-enough-for adults PG-13 zone.
Give it points on setting and a couple of the performances, but the joke-starved “All’s Faire in Love” only rarely rises to the level of fair to middling.
