This film won Best Picture at the Oscars in '99. I don't agree with this, especially given the quality of its competition. It's on this, in part, that I'll try to base my review.
For wit, I'm going to give it a 9. I don't have a rating recorded for Life Is Beautiful (1997), but I can infer from my memory of it from at least four years ago the last time I saw it, a memory better than movies I saw last month, that it is at the very least a 9.5 for wit. That film is heartbreakingly funny and perfectly acted. Shakespeare In Love is by contrast of a considerably lower caliber in its humor and its pathos, this despite taking numerous lines from some of the better works of someone I think may be the greatest writer who ever lived, at least in his own language. I am annoyed by the low quality of some of the puns, not only anachronistic in the extreme, which is forgivable, but poorly constructed and unimaginative. I can only hope that the more tawdry bits don't come from Tom Stoppard, of whom I'm a fan. That said, some of the best bits are plays on Shakespearean in-jokes. I think its funny when Shakespeare clearly steals lines from the world around him. I like his interaction with Marlowe and John Webster.
I also think the acting is great. Tom Wilkinson stands out from the very beginning, really adding the umph from the supporting cast. His character's transformation and complexity are hilarious and heartwarming. Geoffrey Rush is as weasley as he's ever been yet endearing in his own way, especially when he ensures various characters that things will be alright, magically, somehow. Joe Roberts, the little boy who plays John Webster, is great, even if his character is overused. The wealth of great actors playing interesting characters is one of the movie's saving graces. Joseph Fiennes as a fun version of the Bard, Gwyneth Paltrow as a ridiculous lady-love, Martin Clunes as Burbage, Sandra Reinton as Rosalind, Simon Callow as the Master of Revels, Dami Judi as Elizabeth, Imelda Staunton as the Nurse, Colin Firth as Wessex, Ben Affleck as Ned Alleyn, Rupert Everett as Marlowe, Jim Carter as the man playing the Nurse. They all weave something beautiful and funny, even if it does get crowded.
Wisdom is a tricky point. Historical evidence, which as a Shakepeare enthusiast, I am far to aware of for a movie reviewer, continually shows that not only did most of Shakespeare's plays not come from life, their plots are almost always unoriginal and stolen and the lines are a result of the writing prowess of Shakespeare, not some magical muse who inspired him to write a great romance about teenagers in his late twenties, early thirties. This post-Romantic theory of authorial inspiration is even problematic when applied retrospectively to the Romantics themselves, how much more to people who preceded them by centuries? This and the insistently extra-marital inspiration for what Shakespeare chooses to make intra-marital sex scenes gives this film a sour taste as far as wisdom goes. For all that I still give it a 8, which puts it on par with something like Mammoth (2009), which displays some understanding of the world of extra-marital sex and international power relations, but still seems largely to miss the point.
For wonder, it doesn't seem overgenerous to give a 9.5. The spectacle is great on a lot of levels from dance to costume to setting. If not for the language, this movie might have been a great period piece.
Overall, this is not a high encouragement for those who haven't seen it to pick it up, but it still has a place in my heart next to Anonymous (2011), the even less plausible and more outlandish Oxfordian version of the Shakespeare story. They stand out as attempts to read Shakespeare differently, which though not always good reading, it rarely fails to make an interesting story.
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