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DVD : William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream [1999] .
Rating: 
- Oh Dear Lord, Make It STOP!
How can I communicate the aberration that this represents?
I hope that a number of you will be repelled simply to hear that the roles of Hermia and Helena are taken (and then forgotten about) by those mascots of "Pretty but Pointless", Calista Flockhart and Anna Friel. Calista Flockhart rides a Penny Farthing bicycle and blows the tumbling tendrils of hair off her forehead regularly - but it gets worse, even when the talent gets more accomplished.
Stanley Tucci would get laughed off a senior school stage for the way that he tries to invest Puck with thoughtfulness and fun: Jimmie Krankee would have done a better job. Rupert Everett's Oberon is reminescent of a Studio 54 Go-Go dancer murmuring something he has a distant memory of, and Kevin Kline's gurning Bottom made me feel like setting fire to something.
Despite having a bunch of very pretty people (and, in Michelle Pfeiffer's Titania, a certified, Grade A beauty), this is a version of Shakespeare's comic masterpiece without a single ounce of sex in it. It would have been infinitely better as a Vogue fashion spread and accompanying touring exhibition.
Heinously awful.
Rating:
- An inadequate version
Although visually attractive, there is little to praise in this version.
The text is so full of delights that it musty have taken real effort to come up with such a tedious version. The comic elements were especially lack lustre. Nothing would induce me to sit through it again.
Rating:
- Best version I've seen so far of this entertaining play
I've only one minus really on this production, that this Oberon isn't quite as good as the Oberon in the Beeb's Shakespeare Retold set - that Oberon was quite wonderful although the production generally was mediocre. However, this Oberon is perfectly good in what's such a delightful version of the play. I enjoyed the setting and the bicycles and yet maintaining the Shakespearean ethos throughout.
Particular accolades to Kevin Kline. Brilliant performance. Worth having really just for him!
Rating:
- Best version I've seen yet of this great Shakespeare play
Splendid acting, splendid scenery, splendid conception altogether and especially from Kevin Kline who avoids making Bottom a bit of a twerp but instead presents him as a man with intelligence. My favourite part of Midsummer Night's Dream has always been the play within a play about Pyramus and Thisbe, and as always had me convulsed (ie with laughter).
I saw the BBC "Shakespeare retold" version awhile back and that wasn't nearly as good - indeed was sometimes quite boring and the play within a play was turned into two or three very poor modern-style variety acts. So I think it proves this isn't the easiest play to update to the present, although the Beeb's version did have the edge with Titania and Oberon who I think were even better conceived than in this version, but that doesn't detract from this Titania and Oberon as they are excellent. This version highly recommended and very more-ish.
Rating: - Very good acting with ironically fine sense of period
Strangely enough for a play written in the Tudor era and possibly set in Ancient Greece, this presents a very rich Victorian England to us. It's all there- the costumes, the bicycles, the grand English accents, the Duke's beautiful palace. It could have been slightly better if set in England as there are no Italian accents.
If you are reading the play, as has every schoolchild down the ages, then you just do not comprehend what is happening as well as you do here. I think that this is a superlative film and would definitely recommend it.
- Oh Dear Lord, Make It STOP!How can I communicate the aberration that this represents?
I hope that a number of you will be repelled simply to hear that the roles of Hermia and Helena are taken (and then forgotten about) by those mascots of "Pretty but Pointless", Calista Flockhart and Anna Friel. Calista Flockhart rides a Penny Farthing bicycle and blows the tumbling tendrils of hair off her forehead regularly - but it gets worse, even when the talent gets more accomplished.
Stanley Tucci would get laughed off a senior school stage for the way that he tries to invest Puck with thoughtfulness and fun: Jimmie Krankee would have done a better job. Rupert Everett's Oberon is reminescent of a Studio 54 Go-Go dancer murmuring something he has a distant memory of, and Kevin Kline's gurning Bottom made me feel like setting fire to something.
Despite having a bunch of very pretty people (and, in Michelle Pfeiffer's Titania, a certified, Grade A beauty), this is a version of Shakespeare's comic masterpiece without a single ounce of sex in it. It would have been infinitely better as a Vogue fashion spread and accompanying touring exhibition.
Heinously awful.
Rating:
- An inadequate versionAlthough visually attractive, there is little to praise in this version.
The text is so full of delights that it musty have taken real effort to come up with such a tedious version. The comic elements were especially lack lustre. Nothing would induce me to sit through it again.
Rating:
- Best version I've seen so far of this entertaining playI've only one minus really on this production, that this Oberon isn't quite as good as the Oberon in the Beeb's Shakespeare Retold set - that Oberon was quite wonderful although the production generally was mediocre. However, this Oberon is perfectly good in what's such a delightful version of the play. I enjoyed the setting and the bicycles and yet maintaining the Shakespearean ethos throughout.
Particular accolades to Kevin Kline. Brilliant performance. Worth having really just for him!
Rating:
- Best version I've seen yet of this great Shakespeare playSplendid acting, splendid scenery, splendid conception altogether and especially from Kevin Kline who avoids making Bottom a bit of a twerp but instead presents him as a man with intelligence. My favourite part of Midsummer Night's Dream has always been the play within a play about Pyramus and Thisbe, and as always had me convulsed (ie with laughter).
I saw the BBC "Shakespeare retold" version awhile back and that wasn't nearly as good - indeed was sometimes quite boring and the play within a play was turned into two or three very poor modern-style variety acts. So I think it proves this isn't the easiest play to update to the present, although the Beeb's version did have the edge with Titania and Oberon who I think were even better conceived than in this version, but that doesn't detract from this Titania and Oberon as they are excellent. This version highly recommended and very more-ish.
Rating:
- Very good acting with ironically fine sense of periodStrangely enough for a play written in the Tudor era and possibly set in Ancient Greece, this presents a very rich Victorian England to us. It's all there- the costumes, the bicycles, the grand English accents, the Duke's beautiful palace. It could have been slightly better if set in England as there are no Italian accents.
If you are reading the play, as has every schoolchild down the ages, then you just do not comprehend what is happening as well as you do here. I think that this is a superlative film and would definitely recommend it.
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