Shakespeare in Love (Miramax Collector's Series)

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Flawed but Fun, February 11, 2008

"Shakespeare in Love" is a wonderful film, but might have been even more wonderful with two different actors in the leading roles. This is particularly true of the film's leading lady, the highly overrated Gwyneth Paltrow. Without her bleached blonde hair, anorexic frame, and famous theatrical parents (who were close friends of people like Steven Spielberg, who gave Paltrow her first part), no one would ever have looked at Paltrow, who brings this film down several notches with her glaring inferiority to the rest of the cast. She produces her English accent by overlaying her unpleasantly nasal voice with constant breathiness, and ends up sighing her lines most of the time; she indicates high emotion by wrinkling her eyebrows and bobbing her chin in and out - this barely competent actress gets by here due to the reflected glow of REAL talent, i.e., people like Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Dench, Rupert Everett (in a marvelous turn as Marlowe, Shakespeare's rival) and others who really CAN act. Even the limited Ben Affleck does better (although only a bit better) than Paltrow does with her Pretensions to High Falutin' British-Type Acting. Spare me references to the Oscar that Paltrow got for this role: this is the same Academy that gave Tommy Lee Jones Best Supporting Actor for his work in "The Fugitive" over the performance of Ralph Fiennes as the Nazi concentration camp commandant in "Schindler's List" (heck, Fiennes's performance only shows up regularly on critics' lists of "Ten Best Screen Performances by an Actor Ever" - yeah, we'll ALL remember the far superior work Tommy Lee Jones did in that great epic, "The Fugitive"!) So much for Paltrow's Oscar.

And speaking of Fiennes, Joseph Fiennes (Ralph's younger brother), decently talented and handsome enough, does better than his leading lady - but he lacks the spark that would make you care. The result is that the supporting cast in this film is far superior to the two leads and far more interesting to watch. Geoffrey Rush, in fact, totally walks off with this film, just as he nearly walked off with "Pirates of the Caribbean". One can only imagine what "Shakespeare in Love" might have been like with a young Cate Blanchett (or even Keira Knightley) as Viola de Lessup and, say, a young Jeremy Northam as the Bard.

Well, it was not to be, but in the meantime, what we have here is a highly entertaining two hours of speculation on how "Romeo and Juliet" (and "Twelfth Night") might have come to be written, based on a witty script that incorporates sly digs at the social mores of Elizabethan England, life in the theater in ANY era, and modern culture, as well, all brought to you via Tom Stoppard.

The film revolves around the star-crossed romance between a youthful Shakespeare and one Lady Viola de Lessup, and the evolution of "Romeo and Juliet" as Shakespeare transfers the ups and downs of his romance with de Lessup onto the page, and thence to the stage. Shakespeare, of course, was married by the time he wrote "Romeo and Juliet", but even had he not been, the social gulf between a "hired player" and a titled lady would have made this match impossible. So, the film follows the two, as Shakespeare pours their hopeless love into his latest play, "Romeo and Juliet". It's not exactly the first time this structure has been done, but it works as well here as it ever has.

As the film opens, the Bard is having a bit of writer's block as he struggles to write the next play he has promised Rush, who owns one of the two rival theaters operating in London. Rush is already in hock up to his eyebrows to a merciless moneylender (Tom Wilkinson) and desperately needs a hit play. As Shakespeare wrestles with writer's block, Lady Viola de Lessup (Paltrow), only child of a wealthy businessman, is being cased as a suitable bride with a large dowry by the noble but poor Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), with an eye to recouping his fortunes in the tobacco fields of the New World. But Viola is stagestruck and in love with the theater, and has no eyes for a socially brilliant match. She longs to go on stage herself, but even if her social status did not preclude it, the law of the land at the time did not allow women to act onstage - it was thought lewd, and women's roles were played by men and boys, with ingenue parts going to young boys whose voices had not yet broken.

Needless to say, the plays of Will Shakespeare come to Lady Viola's attention, and Lady Viola comes to Shakespeare's attention at a party at her father's house, and before you know it, Lady Viola has dressed up in boys' clothing and auditioned for and won a role in Shakespeare's latest play, and soon the playwright finds out that his new play's leading man is actually the woman he fell madly in love with at first sight, and then - enter Lord Wessex, whose offer for the hand of Lady Viola has been accepted by her father, and the match approved by a (somewhat stagestruck heself) Queen Elizabeth I (Judi Dench). . .well, you get the drift.

The sub-plots and vagaries of life in the theater and the central love story are expertly woven together, the script is relentlessly witty and includes merry references to some of the earthier aspects of life in Elizabethan England, as well as plenty of backstage backbiting, quarreling, sex, and intrigue. Jokes on the Bard's most famous lines abound - meant, of course, to impress upon modern audiences just how thoroughly Shakespeare's influence still permeates our culture and language.

The film is beautifully photographed, and, with the exception of Paltrow and Affleck, who seem to have wandered onto the wrong set, the cast is so marvellous that you can't help enjoying yourself. Two leading actors on the level of the rest of the cast would have gotten this film another star, but even with its flawed leads, "Shakespeare in Love" is fast, funny, and delightful.