The Citizen Review " A man goes to the movies. A critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man." -Robert Warshow

Jack says: B-

In 1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream, we have a perfect example of what happens when a movie is nearly perfectly faithful to a piece of work, but changes all the wrong aspects of it.

The movie has a magical forest of great actors: Christian Bale, Dominic West, Calista Flockhart, Michelle Pfieffer, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Kline, Rupert Everett. They all have pretty good performances, considering the whole movie is in the original Shakespearian tongue. They all do their job, but it's all a mess at the same time. Another mistake was casting Anna Friel in the role of Hermia. Hermia could arguably be called the heroine of the story and she is least well-known actor. It seemed a little off.

The film is not set in Shakespearian times, but in the 19th century in Athens (it basically looks like England) which I think was the first mistake. If the film wanted it to be set in that era, I think 19th century jargon would suited the film better than the original play. It was just too confusing and clunky. If they wanted to keep the Shakespeare-speak, then it should have been set in the original date. There are bicycles, hoop skirts, parasols. It's a little over the top.

The storyline is also exactly the same as the play, which seemed to be a burden in the 'modern' setting. They should have changed it up a little if they wanted the film to communicate better to audiences. It's like it can't really decide if it wants to be a broad Shakespeare-blockbuster or a die hard period piece, for the most discriminating English scholar.

The film uses all classical music for the score, which made for some dramatic sequences that I quite enjoyed, it almost made up for the ridiculous other parts of the film.

The film can be used as an educational tool, since it follows very closely to the script. I watched the film in my Shakespeare class recently and one can basically hold the script in front of them and follow along. People who have studied Shakespeare in high school or maybe even college can appreciate the film for it's accuracies and it's beauty, for it's production value and for the merit of the performances by the supporting cast. But for those scholars out there writing their dissertation on old Billy S., it may seem like a frivolous misfire.

Sincerely,

The Citizen Review