The Canterbury Tales

The animation is great of course, and the diverse styles to some extent conjure up the rich pageant of Chaucer's book. What's lost is the classiness of the telling. Chaucer could treat broad subjects without being crass, and equally he could write beautifully on the most elevated of themes. Inevitably, the screenwriter cannot do those things and comes depressingly close to tabloid-ese at times. Equally inevitable I suppose, was the focus on the more lurid, bawdy stories; and it's sad but not surprising that the makers failed to understand the pilgrims' essential sincerity - their foibles notwithstanding. Certainly the claim that the pilgrimage is only 'an excuse' for a holiday shows a fundamental failure to understand the medieval mind. Chaucer did not see it as any such thing.

In short: it's as good as we have any right to expect - no worse, and no better.