Like a glass of champagne

janedl

I saw Kenneth Branagh's new Shakespeare film, Love's Labour's Lost, at a London preview screening last month, and it's a delight.  Elizabethan purists may moan that less than a third of Shakespeare's text makes it into the movie, but face it - Love's Labour's Lost is a minor romantic comedy which contains thickets of obscure wordplay.  Branagh's decision to replace much of that dialogue with classic songs by Gershwin, Porter and others is quite inspired.  The cast sings and dances more than competently (okay, maybe not quite up to Fred-and-Ginger standards), and it's impossible not to be swept up in the sheer giddy fun of it all.  The ending, which wordlessly expands on Shakespeare's play, may be controversial, but I thought it worked, leaving the heart as well as the funnybone touched and satisfied.

score 10/10

janedl 13 February 2000

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0618035/