I liked this picture a lot when I saw it in first release. Coming back to it now, it has rotted in the can.
I've just spent a few months watching the entire 37-play BBC Shakespeare cycle on DVD, and have seen a great many different ways of acting this kind of material. Congratulations here go to Emma Thompson, who is wonderfully true and real all the way through this film. Richard Briers and Denzel Washington also do fine jobs.
It goes downhill from there. The negative reviews of Keanu Reeves are earned: he struggles with the language, and never once sounds like the words he speaks convey anything from inside. They're laminated to his lips and emerge with difficulty. And Robert Sean Leonard is too darn wet for Claudio. It's impossible to believe that he has ever drawn a sword, let alone been in battle.
Worst of all, Kenneth Branagh is cluttered, calculating and unspontaneous, and is an atrocious director of comedy. It's like he directs the first half of the play from an instruction book for those who have no humor but would like to learn, and makes sure the characters laugh too heartily at each other to cue the audience that it's all supposed to be funny. There is tiptoe-ing around among hedges, struggling with a balky lawn chair and splashing around in a fountain, and it's all dreary and inept. There is entirely too much exaggeration in the facial and vocal performances overall, and Michael Keaton and Ben Elton are grotesque without ever being entertaining as the clowns.
Only with the catastrophic wedding scene does the film come to life, and from then on misses much of the power of the play. But at least they're not making those awful faces any more.
It's like a bus load of English actors (with a few Americans thrown in) is let loose in a rented Italian villa to play charades. There's little that's honest and nothing organic about this whole project.
Fortunately, the BBC studio version with Robert Lindsay and Cherie Lunghi is far more successful at the lights and shadows of the play, with less star power and no location shooting, but far more justice to Shakespeare's genius. That version is highly recommended, but not this one.
I've just spent a few months watching the entire 37-play BBC Shakespeare cycle on DVD, and have seen a great many different ways of acting this kind of material. Congratulations here go to Emma Thompson, who is wonderfully true and real all the way through this film. Richard Briers and Denzel Washington also do fine jobs.
It goes downhill from there. The negative reviews of Keanu Reeves are earned: he struggles with the language, and never once sounds like the words he speaks convey anything from inside. They're laminated to his lips and emerge with difficulty. And Robert Sean Leonard is too darn wet for Claudio. It's impossible to believe that he has ever drawn a sword, let alone been in battle.
Worst of all, Kenneth Branagh is cluttered, calculating and unspontaneous, and is an atrocious director of comedy. It's like he directs the first half of the play from an instruction book for those who have no humor but would like to learn, and makes sure the characters laugh too heartily at each other to cue the audience that it's all supposed to be funny. There is tiptoe-ing around among hedges, struggling with a balky lawn chair and splashing around in a fountain, and it's all dreary and inept. There is entirely too much exaggeration in the facial and vocal performances overall, and Michael Keaton and Ben Elton are grotesque without ever being entertaining as the clowns.
Only with the catastrophic wedding scene does the film come to life, and from then on misses much of the power of the play. But at least they're not making those awful faces any more.
It's like a bus load of English actors (with a few Americans thrown in) is let loose in a rented Italian villa to play charades. There's little that's honest and nothing organic about this whole project.
Fortunately, the BBC studio version with Robert Lindsay and Cherie Lunghi is far more successful at the lights and shadows of the play, with less star power and no location shooting, but far more justice to Shakespeare's genius. That version is highly recommended, but not this one.