

Much Ado About Nothing

In this Shakespearean farce, Hero and her groom-to-be, Claudio, team up with Claudio's commanding officer, Don Pedro, the week before their wedding to hatch a matchmaking scheme. Their targets are sharp-witted duo Benedick and Beatrice -- a tough task indeed, considering their corresponding distaste for love and each other. Meanwhile, meddling Don John plots to ruin the wedding.
No one wears Shakespeare like an old pair of comfortable shoes like Kenneth Branagh. He has adopted 5 Shakespeare's plays into films. Even his failures (Love's Labour's Lost and As You Like It) offer his intimate understanding of the source material and his willingness to make bold interpretation.
Branagh is at his top form on Much Ado About Nothing. A story is as light and fluffy as clouds in the film and just about everyone looks to be having way too much fun. Perhaps that's why Keanu Reeves was so stiff?
The film is a technical marvel, with amazing long shots that open and close the film. It is like watching a perfectly choreographed and storied play. And Patrick Doyle's music is just so joyous that it should be played in heaven.
Roger Ebert once ended his review of A Room With a View that "[the film] moved slowly, it seemed, for the same reason you try to make ice cream last: because it's so good." If I were to criticize Much Ado About Nothing beyond unfitting characterization of Dogberry (Michael Keaton), it is that the film is too efficient for its own good. I wanted more, even if it meant sitting through more of nonsensical antics of Dogberry.