Shakespeare in LoveWell, will wonders never cease - Gwyneth Paltrow can act after all! I had not been sure I wanted to see this movie, having been traumatized by the only other full-length film with Ms. Paltrow in it that I have seen (Emma). Ms. Paltrow struck nothing but false notes in that film - in this one all the notes she struck were true.Of course this movie was a complete fantasy despite the major names of Elizabethan England sprinkled therein (including the Queen herself); but after all, little is known about the actual Shakespeare's life - he could well have fallen in love with a beautiful young woman destined to marry another, been inspired by her to write "Romeo and Juliet," and so forth. The script cleverly fitted all the characters together in such a way that everything seemed to work out for the best, and even the heroine going off to America with her unpleasant new husband the Earl of Wessex was not the horrible tragedy it could have been. Almost every actor in English film today was in the movie; Shakespeare was played by Joseph Fiennes (as my friends call him - "Ray Fiennes less attractive brother", but he is definately as good an actor), Rupert Everett had a bit part as Christopher Marlowe, Simon Callow the Lord of Revels (who for some reason seemed to serve mostly as a Stopper Of Revels), and so forth. Ben Affleck played the part of an egotistical actor, and held his own, as they say, among all the Big English actors around him. (He is definitely wasted in American film and television; but then, so are many other fine American actors.) You don't need to know a lot about Elizabethan and Jacobean drama to enjoy this movie, but it will provide you with a few extra laughs if you do. (For instance, the kid with the pet rats crawling all over him who likes plays best when there is "lots of violence and mutilation" introduces himself as John Webster - you get a gold star if you realize why that is funny!) So this movie had everything necessary for an enjoyable film - Englishmen in tights, Shakespeare, swordplay, androgyny (all those boys dressed up as girls because women were not allowed on stage and Gwyneth Paltrow's character dressed as a boy - the brown wig and moustache serving to disguise that unfortunate resemblance to Macaulay Culkin that she has) - and of course, there was a bit with a dog. |