Wick's Review

Summary - Really Great 4.5

Delicious fun this Elizabethan confection, a Shakespearean extravaganza just this side of full Disnefication.

Superior cast, especially Joseph Fiennes & Gwyneth Paltrow as Romeo & Juliet, er, Will & Viola.
Which Will? Will Shakespeare, sometime actor, full-time rake and pageman for hire.

Shakespeare in Love. Good title, as Will would say.

More Shakespeare, the E! True Story than Being Shakespeare, it’s Shakespeare reduced to melodrama. Think LeBron playing High School again, literarily that is.

Long at two hours, Shakespeare in Love makes for a really great night-in in front of the plasma.

Soak it up now that it’s on Netflix Instant View or become fortune’s fool. Seven Oscars are rarely so cheap.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

The superior cast led by Gwyneth Paltrow’s heiress & Joseph Fiennes’ Bard includes Dame Judi Dench, Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.

Gwyneth’s literary heroine is a superior actor, playing Shakespearean drama as a man, not an easy thing. Young and exuberant, she’s Faculty Lounge pinup material even before baring her breasts.
Gwyneth unbound, twirling joy is a cinematic fantasy par excellence. Oops, back to the cast…

Joseph Fiennes’ Shakespeare is more than reputable as rake, raconteur and writer.

Dame Dench’s harridan of a Queen proves her considerable worth, as ruler and as actor.

Colin Firth plays an aristocrat down on his luck, doing it from underneath some unfortunate facial hair.

Geoffrey Rush has the thankless job of representing theater management.
More than a character, he’s an archetype. The estimable Rush is up to it, of course.

There are others:

• Ben Affleck’s bombastic actor proved that the hunk could at least overact.
• Imelda Staunton’s faithful chamber lady, capable of rocking her chair in-time with her mistress’s fornication.
• Tom Wilkinson plays the Money, well.
• Sandra Reinton’s sexy muse, or is that sex muse.
• Martin Clunes’ Greatest Actor.
• Simon Callow’s Master of the Revels. Don’t ask.
• Rupert Everett as Christopher Marlowe, Kit to his friend and rival Will.

Film - Really Great 4.5

Boldly romantic, nay, undergrad romantic. OK, maybe grad school romantic. Tom Stoppard & Marc Norman’s rich screenplay comes richly to life under John Madden’s enthusiastic direction.

Tragedy and comedy and Tinseltown: Romeo and Juliet; The Twelfth Night; Hollywood. It’s all a big entertaining stew.

Edge - Risqué 2.5

Richly Risqué, the easy way. Highest on Sex, followed by Rudeness, with Violence the least. The easy way.

Gwyneth Paltrow having sex with Joseph Feinnes as William Shakespeare makes the eroticism both real and literary.

Reality - Glib 1.4

Forget high culture, Shakespeare in Love featured Ben Affleck & Gwyneth Paltrow during their idyll as a mega-media couple, before Beniffer for him and after Brad Pitt for her.

Oh yeah, was this really Shakespeare’s life? No.

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