Shakespeare in Love
Miramax and Universal, 1998
Directed by John Madden

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It's called Shakespeare in Love, but a better title would be, In Love With Shakespeare. The movie is infatuated with the title character and you'd better be too or you or the film will be like an English lit class from hell. If you dig the Bard, you'll laugh knowingly at all the sly references. But if Shakespeare is not your cup of tea, get ready for one eye-rolling endurance test.

At its best, the movie is nothing more than an innocuous spoof. As the film opens, Will Shakespeare, played by the brooding Joseph Fiennes (Ralph's less-talented little brother), has writer's block. (Hee-hee!) He's stuck as he tries to write his latest comedy, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirates Daughter (more hee-hee's), until he meets a high-society gal played by Gwyneth Paltrow. She's impersonating a man so she can act in his plays (hee-hee-hee). When he meets her out of drag, he falls in love. Trouble is, her father's already arranged for her to be married. Shakespeare uses the star-crossed-lovers predicament as the plot for his play. From here on out the events of the film track pretty closely with the events of Romeo and Juliet. Hero beckons to his love from beneath her balcony. Hero's friend is murdered. Hero seeks revenge... yadda-yadda-yadda.

The Romeo parallel is the film's one big joke and by establishing it so early on, the script telegraphs all of its punches. We know exactly where the film is going because we've all read the play. Or at least the Cliff's Notes. A more clever idea would be putting Shakespeare through a series of events that reflect several of Shakespeare's better known plays, showing where he got the idea for each one. (By the way, many scholars believe Romeo and Juliet was based on a preexisting story and that Shakespeare's version was actually a "remake" of sorts, so the idea that he would have been inspired to create the play from events in his own life is pure rubbish.)

The film also wastes a good opportunity by giving us a pretty boring Shakespeare. So little is known about the person who wrote The Works of William Shakespeare that I'm willing to give the filmmakers plenty of latitude, but they fail to give us a character who's worthy of the towering figure. Never, as I watched, did I feel I was witnessing a genius in action. Director John Madden -- no, not that John Madden -- doesn't even bother attempting to make-up Fiennes to even slightly resemble Shakespeare's portrait. He doesn't look like Shakespeare, so how can we believe he is Shakespeare?

Instead, were given a Shakespeare who's nothing more than a hunky actor. Which begs the question: why would somebody who looks like him need to go around spouting flowery poetry in order to get chicks (as this Shakespeare does)? A more believable notion would be Shakespeare as a homely bookworm who spends all day in his room writing sonnets because it's the only way he can impress girls. Instead, we're given a Bard who looks like a male model, so we're never truly convinced the leading lady loves him for his words and not his looks.

And that leading lady doesn't do much for us either. Paltrow's over-the-top phony British-accent is too much to bear. Paltrow also spends much of the movie dressed-up as a boy which is fairly redundant since she's a pretty boyish looking woman to begin with. I also couldn't figure out what the hell Paltrow's ex, Ben Affleck, was doing in Elizabethan England, but he manages to make the most of his supporting role. Finally, Dame Judi Dench (she'll always be M, from the James Bond movies to me) shows up as Queen Elizabeth and shows the kids how the acting thing is done. (Another note: Dench played Queen Victoria in 1997's Mrs. Brown, a sign that the world of Elderly British Actresses doesn't have much bench strength.)

The filmmakers behind Shakespeare in Love think they're clever by bringing Shakespeare to life as a character and putting him in a Shakespearean-style love story. But if that's the kind of love story you want to see, there was another writer who did it a lot better. His name was William Shakespeare.

(c) Copyright 1999