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A Midsummer Night's Dream Customer Reviews (4 - 6 of 36 Reviews)

Overproduced and pointless
Shakespeare's play already contains plenty of time-shifts. Ancient Athens meets fairlyland, which in turn meets Elizabethan tradespeople-turned-thespians...adding layers of 19th century Italy to the mix, and bicycles, and windeup gramophones, and a repetitive recycling of Italian opera's greatest hits on the soundtrack, just muddies things up. Lots of money went into this production, and it does have some nice visuals. But there is no genuine artistic vision here. Less would have been more. The two stars are for the director's concept, not for author William S., whose best lines are just about impossible to ruin.

Imperfectly brilliant and touching
This film is an able transposition of Shakespeare's comedy from ancient Athens to the tiny Italian village of Monte Atena at the end of the 19th century. The action takes place on an enormous estate run by Duke Theseus (David Strathairn of "Good Night and Good Luck"). The acting troupe led by Kevin Klein's Bottom the clown is made up of locals who love the theater enough to neglect their other work. The forest filled with magical fairy-folk lies just beyond the carefully clipped meadows that signal the boundary between logic and enchantment.

The film is fun. The lovers (with Calista Flockhart as Helena and a pre-"Batman Begins" Christopher Bale) are by turns love-smitten and repelled. They make their way around the forest on bicycles.The fairy-folk present a kaleidoscopic array of shapes, colors and sizes. It's fun to recognize influences -- from paintings by Waterhouse to Hieronymus Bosch -- that were used to depict them.

Special mention goes to the troupe of clowns that prepares a play for the Duke's wedding. Led by Klein/Bottom they are by turns committed thespians and incompetent oafs. Indeed, they are a play *within* the play-within-a-play as the film takes us inside Bottom's pathetic and unhappy marriage to a woman who has no use for his dreams of the stage. This gives the film a bit of a somber tone, but does it no lasting harm.

The all-star cast is generally up to the task. Michelle Pfeiffer is radiant as Titania. Flockhart is appropriately weepy, confused and irate as befuddled Helena. Stanley Tucci's Robin Goodfellow as appropriately ... puckish in his role as Oberon's servant. And Klein, after an enchantment that has turned him into an ass, incorporates a donkey's braying into his laughter and speech. The presentation of "Pyramis and Thisbe" was a high point of the film, played for all its comic pathos.

There are some qualifications to my praise. The musical score often obscured the dialog -- unpardonable when it comes to the Bard! And there was much unchaste behavior in the forest that could just as easily have been left out or dealt with in hints. In the discovery scene toward the end, the lovers are discovered sleeping in naked embrace by their parents and benefactors. The shock of such a discovery in 18-whatever was replaced by unconvincing resignation on the part of the observers. And some of the roles seeme to have been phoned in, notably Rupert Everett's dull, detached Oberon.

But these quibbles aside, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" managed to capture the intensity of the lovers and the whimsical earthiness of the world of magic.

An Enchantment!
I have never read or seen the play from which this movie was derived. I love the airy, fairytale feel of the movie. I especially like Calista's and Michelle's characters. I enjoyed the enchantment of it all, and specially the moment when they awaken, naked and next to each other, and are found by their parents, it's so funny. Other reviews rant about how it is a good or bad adaptation to the play, however from an unbiased point of view for not reading the original play, it is a great movie. Truly a movie for your collection.

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