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Summary: My favorite Shakespeare film
Review: To hit the high points, Branagh's film version of Much Ado About Nothing: - Makes Shakespearean English come to life. - Is beautifully filmed in northern Italy. - Features an absolutely marvelous cast including Michael Keaton, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington and many other great actors and actresses. - Is funny, romantic, and lively. - Brings the characters to life! If you think Shakespeare is dry, inomprehensible, dated, or otherwise uninteresting to the modern viewer, I ***promise*** this production will change your mind. My daughter lent it to her high school English teacher, who showed it in class. The teen audience, both guys and girls, loved it!
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Summary: Brannagh Makes Shakespeare Live!
Review: This is one of my favorite movies ever! The cast (except for Michael Keaton, awful, and K. Reeves, almost awful) were excellent, most of whom are English Shakesperian trained actors who are in all of his movies and truly wonderful! Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson and Brannagh are worth the price of the video alone! If you aren't nuts about the Bard you'll learn to love him through this terrific film. Brannagh is a genius at presenting his plays on film (Henry V and Hamlet are fantastic as well) and I wish there were more of them. I've watched this many times on LD and will continue to see it over and over again! Always a delight! How many movies can you say that about? Buy this one!!
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Summary: It's exactly that.
Review: Shakespeare / Branagh confection. I understand that for EVERYONE, including Elizabethan scholars, the dialogue in a Shakespeare play requires a bit of coaxing into (for the average intelligent person, about 15 minutes). But how dumb does Branagh think we are? His "HEY NONNY NONNY" opening, in gigantic letters accompanied by a vocalist singing the same thing, is the equivalent of "Shakespeare For Teletubbies". Branagh recovers with a pretty cool opening-credit sequence that has some heroic-looking dudes -- Branagh, Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, etc. -- riding on horseback toward the camera, accompanied by thrilling music. For a moment here, you think: "Wow -- this might be an EXCITING Shakespeare movie!" Calm down. The director misfires again with the next sequence. It's a rompish bit of business that will remind some viewers of that old *Tom Jones* film: giggling, bare-bottomed, feisty, lusty, etc., ladies -- none too great to look at, by the way -- bathing like mad, scrubbing armpits and the like with a fury, in anticipation of the arrival of the guys. It's the sort of scene that's variously described as "earthy" and "bawdy" . . . it's also been done to death in other movies, and is an indication of the aggressive, insistent "joie de vivre" yet to come. And then the odd, but of course culturally sacred, Shakespearean dialogue inevitably gets underway -- deadly to ANY movie, let's face it; and *Much Ado* is no exception. Talk talk talk, archaic talk to boot, for the next 2 hours, slowed down by Branagh's insistence on endless close-ups on his actors as way of helping to convey the meaning of the words. But I don't mean for this review to be a total trash job: there are good things about this movie. Branagh, for instance, is very funny as the reluctant lover Benedick, as is his then-wife Emma Thompson (always brilliant) as Beatrice. The Tuscan scenery may prompt you to call your travel agent.
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Summary: A note for parents
Review: Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing is a gloriously lush production brimming over with Italian sunlight and revelry. I can't add much to previous reviews concerning the many merits of this production, which our family loved, but I do want to alert parents to two scenes that I wish I had known about before viewing. There is a bit of nudity at the beginning of movie, male and female, and all from the back. This nudity is delightfully and quite innocently presented, but I was surprised to see it. Second, Branagh vividly portrays a scene that is described only after the fact by Shakespeare, namely the deception of Don Pedro and Claudio at Hero's window. My young son winced at the depiction of [...] that left little to the imagination. Nevertheless, he loved the movie. We viewed it both before and after attending a live staging of the play, but on second viewing we fast-forwarded through the parts that are objectionable to a child. There is nothing in the movie that is offensive to adults, but since those adults who encourage their children to watch Shakespeare tend to be somewhat particular about their upbringing, I thought these comments might be helpful. Admittedly, as the movie is PG-13, I should have previewed it first.
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Summary: The best student series in print
Review: The Oxford School Shakespeare series, edited by Roma Gill, is the best series in print for students of all ages. I have used them with high school students to great effect. They enjoy the small pictures that are on nearly every page, as well as the side-by-side layout of notes and text. The synopses (really a running commentary) that begins each volume are outstanding, and the sample test questions and suggestions for study will help anyone--student, teacher, or casual reader--to both think about and listen to the plays more carefully. The only thing that some will miss is a discussion of the play's textual history, but this is so rarely a part of graduate study that it can easily be supplemented at the right time by other sources (the new Arden series is great for this). I could not recommend this series more highly.
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Summary: This is not an Unabridge version of Much Ado!
Review: As a professor of Theater Arts at the University of Texas - El Paso, as well as a director and performer with the Shakespeare On The Rock theater company of El Paso, I had ordered this audio verson of Much Ado based on DH Audio's claim that it was unabridged. Much to my dismay and frustation, I discovered that it is in fact NOT AN UNABRIGED PRODUCTION. Shakespeare's text has been considerably edited. While I have no ethical problems with editing Shakespeare, I do have problem with the fact that DH Audio is selling this product under false pretence. Either DH Audio does not check its products before release, or DH Audio does not understand the difference between abridged and unabridged. Either way, they have failed to deliver the product they promised.As for the peformance of this edited version of Much Ado, I found it to be mediocre at best. The muffled sound quality and total lack of ambiant sound presents the listener with nothing but the image of actors sitting around a microphone in bare sound studio. This image is only renforced by the rusting of pages as the actors read from their scripts. The actor's delivery is often painfully slow, with few attempts at any actual comedy. The performances of these Canadian actors are futher hindered by their adoption of British dialects, a practice largely considered out of date for non-British perfomers since the early 1900's. In my professional opinion, this audio production should avoided in favor of higher quality productions of Much Ado such as those of Caedmon Audio, or better yet, the Archangel Project.
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Summary: An Amazing Movie
Review: This movie is a must see! Branagh did a wonderful job directing Emma Thomson, Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves and others (himself included.) The setting is absolutely beautiful, the scenes riveting and the actors did a great job. The difficult Shakespearean dialogue comes to life. I give this movie +5 stars!
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Summary: Much Ado About Something
Review: Shakesphere done well yet again by Emma and Kenneth, the do another fantastic job. These two act well and make a This old tale come alive before your eyes. Emma's delievery of lines is so perfect that one really feels that Shakesphere has been been give new life. It is one of his happy plays and shows well in the caste. Enjoy we did :) You will also see a number of well known faces pop up during this film. A definate must see.
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Summary: Greatly Entertaining
Review: I have yet watched two other Branagh movies- Hamlet and Frankenstein- and from the three, this one is the best. Absolutely hilarious, and not boring for a second. Branagh's direction is great. The cast is also something of a tresure- Denzel Washington, Robert Sean Leonard, Keanu Reeves, Kate Beckinsale (a lot better then in Pearl Harbor) Michael Keaton, Emma Thompson, Brian Blessed and Branagh himself give off great preformances (even Reeves). Patrick Doyle's music is beautiful, too. Very entertaining, and absolutely satisfying. I strongly recommend it.
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Summary: High marks for the movie. Low marks for Keanu
Review: This is such a fun spirited movie. It is one to throw in one you need your mood brightened. It is funny, clever, and beautiful to watch. All the cast, save one, comport themselves most admirably. After casting Keanu (Whoa! I'm doing Shakespeare) in this one, you would have thought he would avoid doing something similar in the future. Alas, we had Matthew Lillard in Love's Labour's Lost.
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