A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) YTS

Reviewed by CinemaSerf 6 / 10

This is my favourite Shakespeare story, full of

This is my favourite Shakespeare story, full of mischief and mayhem, comedy and even a good bit of lust mixed in with the true love. This, however, is a really pedestrian adaptation that doesn't measure (for measure) up at all. The all important character of "Puck" is really quite underplayed by Stanley Tucci and Kevin Klein's "Bottom" comes across better suited for a pantomime performance of this tale of the ultimate love triangle. If you don't know the story: "Hermia" (Anna Friel) is in love with "Lysander" (Dominic West) but her father (Bernard Hill) wants her to marry "Demetrius" (Christian Bale). In the end they have to go before the Duke (David Strathairn) who says either marry as you're bid or prepare to die! Bent on escaping, they all end up in the forest and under a magical spell from "Puck" that throws all of their order into chaos and leaves us with some colourful and entertaining scenarios as the poor old Duke attends to his own impending nuptials whilst unsure of who actually loves whom! The problem with the casting here is that they all seem a little overwhelmed by the language. It does stick to the traditional dialogue, and I couldn't help but wonder if maybe the stars were just too in awe of what they were acting and so nothing really comes across as very natural or engaging to watch. It looks good, there is a fine score mixing the classical with a Simon Boswell original but sadly the comedy doesn't work so well and the whole thing underperforms this magical and whimsical story. Nothing special here, sorry.

Reviewed by Steve G-2 6 / 10

Lots of good acting talent, mostly gone to waste

An exaggerated, soap-opera-like version of Shakespeare. The director apparently decided to challenge himself - but not the audience - by using Shakespeare's words, extracting every possible innuendo and making each one graphic; no subtlety is permitted. As a result, many significant elements of the resulting story are done in pantomime - since they were never in the original script (sort of an inversion of the "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" experiment). Almost every spoken line is an exercise in melodrama. Only Puck - naturally the sprightliest and most off-beat character - is pleasantly mild. Calista Flockhart manages to make her character highly appealing despite the high tragedy that pervades her every word, while romantic male leads Christian Bale and Dominic West remain thoroughly unlikeable throughout. Kevin Kline oscillates from hambone to buffoon to romantic dreamer - all of which he does well, but they don't add up to a single coherent character. Finally, the filming takes a story originally set in ancient Greece, with a small cadre of 17th-century English clowns, and transposes it to turn-of-the century Italy - without any effort to reconcile the resulting inconsistencies. The pace remains suitably frantic until the last fifteen minutes, which appear to be an attempt at sentiment but fall flat. A visually attractive film, but overall reminiscent of "Finian's Rainbow" without the advantage of interesting music.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

1999

Action / Comedy / Fantasy / Romance

A Midsummer Night's Dream

1999

Action / Comedy / Fantasy / Romance

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This is my favourite Shakespeare story, full of

Lots of good acting talent, mostly gone to waste

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