Love's Labour's Lost

Rating:
Summary: It made me smile
Review: Like Much Ado About Nothing, this movie made me smile. Branagh's direction is brillant. I love Shakespeare, but I think there are times to take his work seriously (e.g. Hamlet), and times to just sit back and have some fun, and Branagh has done that with Love's Labour's Lost. I read somewhere that the black and white "newsreel" intros were inserted after test screening the original, because audiences couldn't decide whether they should be laughing or taking the film seriously. I could have done without the newsreel myself, but it is a minor distraction in an otherwise outrageously fun interpretation. Alicia Silverstone clearly had to stretch for this role, and for the most part pulls it off. Adrian Lester as Dumaine steals several scenes with his dancing ability and left me wanting to see more. If you don't laugh enough during the movie, watch the outtakes section on the DVD - they are hysterical.

Rating:
Summary: a daring release
Review: Kenneth Branagh, one of the most talented all-around filmmakers of our time, surprises his fans with every film he creates. Perhaps this was the most shocking, given the nature of the film--a musical comedy of a Shakespeare play! Some feel that the concept was of merit, but that the execution was simply disappointing. First of all, the film is meant as nothing more than a light-hearted, funny, danceable spin on a classic story. Secondly, as always, Branagh cast the most unusual actors, but with great success. Every one of them--especially Matthew Lillard--had singing and dancing skills to rival the most respected Broadway icons.
Though not for every taste, the film certainly deserves credit for originality, style, and the courage that it took to make such a daring and different sort of film in this day and age.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, I beg to differ...
Review: from most of the reviewers. I saw this movie in Dublin before it was released in America, and it's an experience I'd almost forgotten--because it was forgettable.

The New Twist: Let's make a Shakespeare play in the style of a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical, with famous songs you must know. Well, maybe if you had actors and actresses who could sing, you'd have something there. However, such was not the case here. Please feel free to watch something else.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely charming!
Review: Purists who believe in only the literal performance of Shakespeare may come away grumbling, but for the rest of us, this is a treat. Kenneth Branagh has done a fine job with this adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy to a 1930's musical. The choreography is very enertaining while keeping its technical demand within the abilities of the cast, and the singing is quite appropriate....I'd much rather hear a song a little "rough" but in the speaker's natural voice than a really slick dubbing of somebody else's singing!

I liked the faithfulness to the style of the old time musical. Most of the transitions from verse to song are quite good. The costumes and their coloration are quite pleasing to the eye. In all, a most enjoyable treatment of a whimsical love story. It will make you smile, and probably sing along!

Rating:
Summary: Five stars isn't high enough for this fun, charming movie!!!
Review: Normally when I watch a Shakespearean film adaptation, I'm a purist at heart. I love it when they do all the dialogue with all the "trimmings." But I have to tell you how much I love this movie, it's fun, funny, and absolutely a joy to behold. The music is great and you can sing along with them and marvel at their dancing and singing abilities. I'm a huge fan of Kenneth Branagh especially when he does Shakespeare. You can see that he is really in his element. Run, Run, Run to rent or better yet buy this movie, for you'll want to see it many, many times.

Rating:
Summary: Light-hearted entertainment
Review: I found this movie to be fun and a lovely change from the ever serious productions of the Bard. Many people seem to have the misconception that Shakespeare wrote nothing but serious literature when many of his plays were written to please the Renaissance theater crowd...this is obviously one of those plays. Branagh is great at doing Shakespeare differently...he has introduced people to material they wouldn't normally enjoy and he has made many of them visually thrilling. I've found in several of these reviews that the viewer was taking the production far too seriously. The movie was done in musical form as a homage to the bygone era of Hollywood musicals...so what if not all of the cast was exceptional dancers or singers, the point is they were having fun and the viewer is supposed to as well. I for one thoroughly enjoyed the movie...the colors were vibrant, the music classic, and there was much humor to be found.

Rating:
Summary: Immensely Charming
Review: What can you say, it works. The two curmudgeons who disliked the film should be sentenced to see the full play produced on stage for life - because LLL was probably unintelligible even in its own day on stage (tons of in-jokes that were almost certainly dated by 1600), and is completely beyond comprehension in this. What Branagh has done is taken the goassamer elements of the plot, brightened them with some first class songs and wonderful staging (can't say dancing, because almost none of the principals can dance), done one brilliant conflation of the Bard's best lines from the play (toward the end, concerning women's eyes and the lessons to be learned from them, superb editing) and come up with a first class piece of nostalgia, barely Shakespearean, but close enough.

So it isn't the pure stuff by a country mile. And yet one does have the feeling that Big Bill himself would have smiled and said, `he's got it exactly right.'

Rating:
Summary: Shakespeare and Thirties Music Done Well
Review: This video is a must for anyone who enjoys thirties musicals and Shakespeare. Kenneth Branagh departed from his Hamlet which included all of the words of Shakespeare to create a musical that is both fun and entertaining. I have to admit that the first time I watched the video, I was distracted by the newsreel type broadcasts throughout, but upon watching it again I realized that Branagh was being true to the type of newscast of the time period that he set his movie in. The characters are cast well and the music and dances are well done. This video is for anyone who wants a nice light movie.

Rating:
Summary: Audacious, Experimental Film Making--Bravo, Kenneth!
Review: I thought hubby was going to die during the first ten minutes of this. At that point it was a solid romantic comedy by Shakespeare intercut with some pre WWII newsreel type footage. I looked over at him and asked how he liked it. "I hate it," he responded. "Well," I said, "I guess I could watch it myself tomorrow since I want to see them break out into all of those Cole Porter and Irving Berlin numbers during the midst of this Shakespearean comedy." All of a sudden I noticed the remote had crept closer to his chest and he said, "Let's give it another five minutes." I knew I had him and ,sure enough, he was laughing like mad when the burly Spainard broke into "I Get A Kick Out Of You." The tale itself is slight about 4 men who want to get together with 4 women but for this vow they've made to immerse themselves in asceticism for 3 years. That vow is easily broken. The play is also updated to the 1930-1940s WWII Europe, which of course goes better with the music. I think a partial debt is owed here to Woody Allen's "Everyone Says I Love You," which first broke the musical into non-musical material with non-musical stars. However, I'll take bold experimentation any way I can get it, begged, borrowed or blue! Really, it is closer to 4.5 stars but I can't put it in quite the same 5 star class as Ethan Hawke in "Hamlet 2000" or Hopkins and Lange in "Titus." Bottom line: see it.

Rating:
Summary: Lighten up! This is for fun!
Review: Kenneth Branagh must have taken a leaf from Monty Python. Every film he does could have the subtitle of "And now for something completely different!"

That's one of the things I love about him. He's daring and wants to experience (and wants us to experience) all sorts of moods, emotions, film genre, etc.

Love's Labour's Lost is for fun! His and ours! One review I read criticized KB for using film reversal to lengthen one of the numbers, but have you watched those movies to which he was paying homage? That's how they did it too! It wouldn't have been near as much fun if he'd done it "right"! I thought the "Esther Williams" bit was hysterical!

I couldn't believe it when I saw Silverstone as the princess, but she was wonderful in what had to be a huge stretch for her. It was a stretch for all of them - and for us as viewers. That's what made it fun and an adventure!

The music is great, the actors are beautiful and funny and sweet and the plotline is ........well, it's Shakespeare!

Don't take it seriously - Neither Shakespeare nor Branagh meant it that way! Watch it, laugh with it, not at it and admire a man who can tear your heart out as "Henry V", scare you to death in "Dead Again", have you rolling in the aisles with "Much Ado", leave you in awestruck wonder as "Hamlet" and give you a jolly good toe-tapping time with LLL!