Much Ado About Nothing | | Cast : | Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Keanu Reeves, Kate Beckinsale | | Director : | Kenneth Branagh | | Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | May 07, 1993 | | DVD Released Date : | January 07, 2003 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 03, 2005 | | Summary | Kenneth Rules | Content
 | Kenny as I like to call him, is one of the most underrated actors of this generation. Shakespeare was something I was forced to read in class and never got a handle of it. My ex-husband is a stage actor and he would cringe when I said that. Kenneth brings this story to life and has me looking seeking out more of what I used to run from. I'm on my quest for more things Shakespeare. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 24, 2005 | | Summary | Pleasant But Tiresome | Content
| One of Shakespeare's more cheerful plays gets the Hollywood treatment with mixed results. The cast tends towards the melodramatic and Branaugh doesn't keep a very tight hold on the directing reins. Also, the delivery by some of the actors, particularly in small rolls, strikes me more as recitation of memorized dialogue than actual understanding of the dialogue. Shakespeare is notoriously difficult to film because he was so profound and so much more intelligent than the average man. Its hard to find actors learned and intelligent enough to understand the diologue and act it convincingly. Even his lightest material contains layers and layers. Also, some ideas and scenes just don't translate from the stage to the screen. Branaugh has, oddly enough, done better work with more difficult material in Hamlet & Othello. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 21, 2005 | | Summary | my first taste Of shakespear | Content
| Since I first saw this movie 7 years ago i have probably seen it 150 times. this is a great film this was my first taste of shakespear and now im studying his complet works!this flim has a lot of hummor and some drama. Its approprit to all who love Shakespear and all who want to have a taste. Only Shakespear could write it ... but this in my hummble oppinen is the best Shakespear MOVIE yet.Kenneth Brannagh and Emma Thompson really do a faboulse job of playing Beatrice and benedick. the supporting actors do a good job of ...well... supporting
this movie has be a movie ive wachct forever and am happy to see it in a dvd form. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 29, 2005 | | Summary | Shakespeare does Mel Brooks! | Content
| Well, the title is a bit of an exaggeration but "Much Ado About Nothing" is a wonderful exercise in "faux pas," blended with the tongue firmly placed in cheek.
It is Shakespeare for the masses!
The acting is top notch, especially from the always underrated Michael Keaton, hilarious as "the constable". Long after the film is over, one will fondly remember a line associated with him.
The only minor "flaw" is the closing song, sung by most of the principals and extras, at the film's conclusion. The film was lighthearted enough, without the addition of the "sappy" ditty.
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| Rating | | | Date | May 14, 2005 | | Summary | A Dainty Dish. | Content
| Since his Oscar-nominated "Henry V" adaptation, Kenneth Branagh has come up with a simple, effective recipe: Blend 3 parts English actors well-versed in all things "Bard" with 1 or 2 parts Hollywood, sprinkle the mixture liberally over one of Shakespeare's plays, lift the material out of its original temporal and local context to provide an updated meaning, and garnish it by casting yourself and, until the mid-1990s, (then-)wife Emma Thompson in opposite starring roles.
In "Much Ado About Nothing," that formula works to near-perfection. A comedy of errors possibly written in one of the Bard's busiest years (1599) - although as usual, dating is a minor guessing game - "Much Ado" lives primarily from its timeless characters, making it an ideal object for transformation a la Branagh. Thus, renaissance Sicily becomes 19th century Tuscany (although the location's name, Messina, remains unchanged); and the intrigues centering around the battle of the sexes between Signor Benedick of Padua (Branagh) and Lady Beatrice (Thompson), the niece of Messina's governor Don Leonato (Richard Briers), and their love's labors won - initially the play's intended title; Benedick and Beatrice are a more liberated version of the earlier "Love's Labor's Lost"'s Biron and Rosaline - as well as the schemes surrounding the play's other couple, Benedick's friend Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard) and Beatrice's cousin Hero (Kate Beckinsale) become a light-hearted counterpoint to the more serious, politically charged intrigues of novels such as Stendhal's "Charterhouse of Parma:" Indeed, the military campaign from which Benedick and Claudio are returning with Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon (Denzel Washington) at the story's beginning could easily be one associated with Italy's 19th century struggle for nationhood.
While according to the play's conception it is ostensibly the relationship between Hero and Claudio that drives the plot - as well as the plotting by Don Pedro's illegitimate brother, Don John (Keanu Reeves) - Beatrice and Benedick are the more interesting couple; both sworn enemies of love, they are not kept apart by a scheming villain but by their own conceit, and are brought *together* by a ruse of Don Pedro's (although even that wouldn't have worked against their will: "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably," Benedick tells Beatrice.) And while Don John's machinations create much heartbreak and drama once they have come into fruition, the story's highlights are Benedick's and Beatrice's battles of wits; the sparks flying between them from their first scene to their last: even in front of the chapel, they still - although now primarily for their audience's benefit - respond to each other's question "Do not you love me?" with "No, no more than reason," and when Benedick finally tells Beatrice he will have her, but only "for pity," she tartly answers, "I would not deny you; - but ... I yield upon great persuasion; and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption" - whereupon Benedick, most uncharacteristically, stops her with a kiss.
Branagh's and Thompson's chemistry works to optimum effect here; and while every Kenneth Branagh movie is as much star vehicle for its creator as it is about the project itself, Benedick's conversion from a man determined not to let love "transform [him] into an oyster" into a married man (because after all, "the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor I did not think I should live - till I were married"!) is a pure joy to watch. Emma Thompson's Beatrice, similarly, is an incredibly modern, independent young woman; and scenes like her advice to Hero not to blindly follow her father's (Don Leonato's) wishes in marrying but, if necessary, "make another courtesy and say, Father, as it please *me*" only enhance the play's and her character's timeless quality.
Yet, while the leading couple's performances are the movie's shining anchor pieces, there is much to enjoy in the remaining cast as well: Richard Briers's Don Leonato, albeit more English country squire than Italian nobleman, is the kind of doting father that many a daughter would surely wish for; and what he may lack in Italian flavor is more than made up for in Brian Blessed's Don Antonio, Leonato's brother. Kate Beckinsale is a charming, innocent Hero and well-matched with Robert Sean Leonard's Claudio (who after "Dead Poets Society" seemed virtually guaranteed to show up in a Shakespeare adaptation sooner or later); as generally, leaving aside the appropriateness of American accents in a movie like this, the Hollywood contingent acquits itself well. Washington's, Leonard's and Brier's "Cupid" plot particularly is a delight (even if the former might occasionally have gained extra mileage enunciation-wise). Keanu Reeves, cast against stereotype as Don John, is a bit too busy looking sullen to realize the role's full sardonic potential: "melancholy," in Shakespeare's times, after all was a generic term encompassing everything from madness to various saner forms of ill humor; and I wonder what - but for the generational difference - someone like Sir Ian McKellen might have done with that role. But as a self-described "plain-dealing villain" Reeves is certainly appropriately menacing. Michael Keaton's Dogberry, finally, is partly brother-in-spirit to Beetlejuice, partly simply the eternal stupid officer; the play's boorish comic relief and as such spot-on, delivering his many malaproprisms with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
The cast is rounded out by several actors who might well have demanded larger roles but nevertheless look ideally matched for the parts they play, including Imelda Staunton and Phyllida Law as Hero's gentlewomen Margaret and Ursula, Gerard Horan and Richard Clifford as Don John's associates Borachio and Conrade, and Ben Elton as Dogberry's "neighbor" Verges. (In addition, score composer Patrick Doyle stands in as minstrel Balthazar.) With minimal editing of the play's original language, a set design making full use of the movie's Tuscan setting, and lavish production values overall, this is a feast for the senses and, on the whole, an adaptation of which even the Bard himself, I think, would have approved. |
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