My roommate and I sat down to watch this movie expecting Good Things(TM) from Kenneth Branagh, Nathan Lane, the Weinstein brothers, and the array of talented artists retained to create this movie.
It opens in a fresh and original manner -- the retro newsreel draws one in, seeming to promise a clever interpretation of a Shakespearean comedy. After enjoying "Clueless" and "10 Things I Hate About You", which are charming (and admittedly fluffy) interpretations of classic literature, I was looking forward to Kenneth Branagh's take on this play. The play was, in fact, not an interpretation, but a literal recitation of the lines of play. I hesitate to call it a performance. A train wreck of taste would be more appropriate.
Aspects of this movie that were good include the costumes and the sets, and the performances by the upper tier actors. I do not include Matthew Lillard in this tier. In my mental construction of these tiers, Matthew Lillard is wandering somewhere in the basement wondering out loud to himself why he always seems to have a stuffy nose.
And while I am on the topic of actors whose grasp of delivery is tenuous at best, Alicia Silverstone (in the lead actress role as a French princess) southern-california's her way through her lines in a way that will make you shudder or cry or possibly fall to your knees and beg Ol Willy's forgiveness for the stomach-turning butchery of his poetry. It seemed at times as if the king would have to be surreptitiously wiping his face at regular intervals, since Ms. Silverstone started spraying her lines whenever the read rate leaped above "really slow".
The attempts at farce, e.g. a stuffed sheep falling over suddenly, rubber chickens, and a mortifying and incomprehensible performance of Don Something-schmermen-vermen-moustache, were in most cases just flat. One out of five caused me to make a hiccupy noise that might have been taken for a chuckle, though I wouldn't have wanted to lay odds either way.
I watched the DVD through the first eight chapters, but could not bear to finish watching this movie. It was ponderous and embarrassing -- taking something beautiful and human and elegant and worth the effort to understand (Shakespeare) and slathering heavy makeup and clown shoes on it in order to "relate" to a modern audience. It is dismaying to be a part of this modern audience and to be thought of in such an ungenerous fashion. Intelligence and soul in a story shine right through the screen, but call for a light touch. This movie could have been really good. It just plain wasn't.
It opens in a fresh and original manner -- the retro newsreel draws one in, seeming to promise a clever interpretation of a Shakespearean comedy. After enjoying "Clueless" and "10 Things I Hate About You", which are charming (and admittedly fluffy) interpretations of classic literature, I was looking forward to Kenneth Branagh's take on this play. The play was, in fact, not an interpretation, but a literal recitation of the lines of play. I hesitate to call it a performance. A train wreck of taste would be more appropriate.
Aspects of this movie that were good include the costumes and the sets, and the performances by the upper tier actors. I do not include Matthew Lillard in this tier. In my mental construction of these tiers, Matthew Lillard is wandering somewhere in the basement wondering out loud to himself why he always seems to have a stuffy nose.
And while I am on the topic of actors whose grasp of delivery is tenuous at best, Alicia Silverstone (in the lead actress role as a French princess) southern-california's her way through her lines in a way that will make you shudder or cry or possibly fall to your knees and beg Ol Willy's forgiveness for the stomach-turning butchery of his poetry. It seemed at times as if the king would have to be surreptitiously wiping his face at regular intervals, since Ms. Silverstone started spraying her lines whenever the read rate leaped above "really slow".
The attempts at farce, e.g. a stuffed sheep falling over suddenly, rubber chickens, and a mortifying and incomprehensible performance of Don Something-schmermen-vermen-moustache, were in most cases just flat. One out of five caused me to make a hiccupy noise that might have been taken for a chuckle, though I wouldn't have wanted to lay odds either way.
I watched the DVD through the first eight chapters, but could not bear to finish watching this movie. It was ponderous and embarrassing -- taking something beautiful and human and elegant and worth the effort to understand (Shakespeare) and slathering heavy makeup and clown shoes on it in order to "relate" to a modern audience. It is dismaying to be a part of this modern audience and to be thought of in such an ungenerous fashion. Intelligence and soul in a story shine right through the screen, but call for a light touch. This movie could have been really good. It just plain wasn't.