Love's Labour's Lost Review by Tim Wick
Shakespeare has an almost mystical quality to him that is hard to ignore.
Witness that with all the movies that come out in a particular year, there
are typically at least one or two adaptations of his work. Last year we had
the modernization of Taming of the Shrew in Ten Things I Hate About You and
the dismal adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream I chose as the worst
movie of 1999. We have already seen Titus and Hamlet this year (actually, I
haven't seen them, but they are out there) and now we have Kenneth Branagh's
Love's Labour's Lost. You just can't avoid the Bard.
Not that I mind. I love Shakespeare and try to see the various adaptations
of his work wherever I can. I am a bit "Hamleted out" at the moment, recent
years having given us Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh's interpretations of
the most widely quoted play in history (even if most of us don't realize we
are quoting it). I have no doubt I will get to the Ethan Hawke version as
well, but I'm not in a hurry.
But I will make the effort to see a Branagh Shakespeare without fail. His
ability to capture the complex poetry that is Shakespeare in a way that
modern movie audiences will understand is amazing. One of the most
wonderful visuals I can remember is the opening of Branagh's Henry V. A
lone match lights up Derek Jacobi's face as he mutters "Oh, for a muse of
fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention". A single match
managed to take that difficult language and make it understandable.
Much Ado About Nothing was another wonderful film that stumbled only when
Keanu Reeves was on the screen. The banter between Benedick and Beatrice,
so integral to the play, was perfectly filmed. Again, Branagh found a way
to make the language make sense to the modern ear.
Hamlet was an experiment that did not fail, but wasn't what I would call a
complete success. The attempt was to produce the entire play, uncut. The
result was a four hour film that was a wonderful interpretation of the
script, but also a dull reminder of why many scenes are not typically
performed.
But with all the Shakespeare there is for us to see, it makes sense that
Branagh decided to be a little - ambitious - with Love's Labour's Lost.
Oddly, the play is what weighs down this movie.
For some reason - I'm not sure why - Branagh decided to make a musical. One
moment, our characters are spouting Shakespearean dialogue and the next they
are singing a 40's tune like Heaven or There's no Business Like Show
Business. I wasn't sure how it would work, but the fact is that it worked
very well.
There was a campiness mixed with a sort of reverence that really worked.
Obviously, to a modern audience the idea of breaking into song and dance is
kind of stupid. The film doesn't ignore that and instead let's you laugh at
the strange transition from speech to song. Then, once you have gotten that
out of your system you can enjoy the homage's to Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire,
Ginger Rogers, Busby Berkley and Ester Williams. Oddly enough, the fact
that Alicia Silverstone (as the Princess) and Kenneth Branagh (as Berowne)
can't really dance all that well is just about the perfect choice. In fact,
it was clear that the members of the cast were not all chosen for their
dancing skill so when there are ensemble dancing pieces, the unevenness of
the dancing is obvious. Somehow, that unevenness manages to work.
The movie has two personalities, though, and it is the other personality
that doesn't quite work.
When the characters were singing and dancing, I was having a great time.
When they were spouting Shakespearean poetry, I was less impressed.
The problem is that Love's Labour's Lost is not one of the Bard's better
comedies. It lacks the verbal banter that makes Much Ado and Midsummer such
fine plays and it lacks the entertaining characters that make As You Like It
so enjoyable. Better classified as a straight romance than a comedy, it
simply doesn't have a lot of action. You have a prince and his three
friends who have sworn off women until the princess and her three ladies in
waiting show up. You can guess what happens to our four friends vows in a
very short time.
This movie clocks in at a little over 90 minutes and 30 of it is music.
That leaves just over an hour of the original play. Given you can't really
do a Shakespeare in less than two hours, there are about 60 minutes of
dialogue that have been cut out. Since the movie is set in 1939, much of
this missing plot is spelled out in the form of amusing news reel footage
throughout the film. Still, you can't get past the fact that the basic plot
is - well - pretty dull.
Nathan Lane is cast as Costard, the Prince's fool. Along with the other
Rustics (Shakespeare's lower class comic relief characters), Lane is amusing
when given the chance, but under used. I think he had less than five
minutes of screen time including his solo in There's no Business Like Show
Business. I don't know if his best stuff got left on the cutting room
floor, but it was an unfortunate underuse of a good comic actor.
Branagh of course gave himself the lover with the best lines, but he didn't
really do a good job of delivering them, which is a let down following his
wonderful reading of Benedick in Much Ado. I'm not sure why he was so off
his game here, but he just didn't quite have the love for the words that he
has seemed to have in his other Shakespeare outings.
Silverstone just isn't a classic princess or a Shakespearean actor. Her
lines are fortunately very few because when you have Cher from Clueless
delivering Shakespearean dialogue, it doesn't quite work.
Did I like the movie? For the most part, yes I did. It's probably the
worst of Branagh's Shakespeare films, but it was still a good diversion.
For the dance sequences alone, it was worth the time I invested in it.
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