3/5 Is this a joke?
  by M. Miller (MD, United States)
I was excited to see this movie because I love Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare movies. Unlike his others, though, I haven't read this Shakespeare play. So maybe I should have done that before I watched the movie. Oh, well, too late. The movie started out ok; a ton of dialogue about the vow the four men have taken and how serious it is. But then all of a sudden, they broke into SONG! When I realized that he turned it into a musical, I couldn't decide how I felt about it. I think it might work if the idea was really SOLD - in other words, the actors could sing and dance really well, instead of just ok singing and dances that were obviously choreographed for people who aren't dancers. This was not convincing. I still can't figure out whether Branagh was trying to pay homage to a great film genre (1930s/40s movie musical) or poking gentle fun at it. The dancing is weak, with the exception of Adrian Lester, who both sings and dances well in this film - unfortunately that just seems to emphasize how mediocre the singing and dancing of the others is. And I have no idea why a scene from "Chicago" took over the movie when the song "Let's Face the Music and Dance" came on. It really made no sense; the rest of the film wasn't that sensual at all, and there certainly wouldn't have been dancing like that in the 1940s musicals. To be frank, the musical numbers and dances just didn't flow naturally in each scene - they were awkward and not enjoyable enough to be excused for that awkwardness. Perhaps it is because generally the 1930s/40s musicals paired cheesy songs with cheesy lovey-dovey dialogue, so it flowed. Or, failing that, they used a show-within-a-show vehicle to feature the songs (think White Christmas). Maybe this could have been successful if Boublil & Schonberg (Les Miserables) had composed more serious music for it, rather than Branagh choosing to use old standards.

I watched the film to the end, because I didn't know what actually happened in the play and wanted to know. I'm still not sure I do know. We got a bunch of fake news reels throughout the movie and a whole bunch at the end, which somehow were supposed to help, I am sure, but I think they fell flat and the ending was way too rushed and abrupt. The ladies say, "oh, we have to go so the princess can be queen now that her's father's dead - wait a year for us," then there's a war, the men all fight/ladies help with the war's cause; then it's over and they are together, yippee! I don't feel like we had enough time to see the characters fall in love for real, so I didn't really care whether they got together in the end or not. And I'm sorry, but Alicia just didn't work in that princess role. She was the Keanu Reeves of the production (although not as bad as he was in Much Ado - shudder). It was very hard to get over her pronunciation and "acting". I also couldn't figure out what the point was of the following characters: the Spaniard, the country lass, Nathan Lane's character, the constable, the professor, and the reverend. I know they are in the play; but they didn't seem to have a connection to the other characters here, and I certainly couldn't understand what was going on between them. The funniest scene (at least I hope it was supposed to be funny) was when the country lass, the prof., the reverend, the constable, etc. were "dancing" - I put it in quotes because I'm not sure I'd call it that. What I did like: the costumes, the scenery. A little bit of the acting, maybe some of Branagh's lines. But even Branagh has a speech in the library which seems acted/spoken in an identical way to his soliloquy in Much Ado where he's describing the kind of woman he wants, which I found disappointing and it made me think less of him as an actor.

Watch this movie if you want to see how strange it is. I gave it three stars because it's not as though the source material is bad, and I won't throw up if I have to watch it again. It's worth a once-through if you like Shakespeare and musicals. It probably could have been so much better, though.

4/5 Delightfully silly
  by Dennis Dorwick (Australia)
Although this production leaves the ground (literally in one scene) of the text it is a beautiful and delighfully silly film. Love's Labour Lost is a play of wit which delighted Elizabeth's court but demands much of a modern reader/playgoer... but rewards are there for the persistant. Branagh offers a sweetener if you haven't read it.

3/5 I Get a Kick out of You
  by John Murphy
"Love's Labour's Lost" is an entertaining mash-up of a 1930's era musical with one of Shakespeare's slighter comedies. The combination is less seamless than one might have wished, but Kenneth Branagh and his photogenic cast coast on creamy charm. This flighty flick has all the nutritional value of a flute of champagne, but who says Shakespeare has to be good for you? After Branagh's epic, unabridged "Hamlet"--a four course meal if ever there was one--no one can blame him for whipping up this frothy dessert.

The fact that "LLL" is relatively unknown Shakespeare gives Branagh license to play fast and loose with his source material. This adaptation doesn't labor under the false pretense that it is anything more than it is - an old fashioned paean to old-fashioned movie musicals. Branagh sets the film in a Technicolor dreamscape that deliberately echoes the great musicals of yesteryear. The soundtrack features hummable hits by the likes of Irving Berlin, Gershwin, and Cole Porter, and the movie itself is a wholehearted embrace of old-school glamour: dapper tuxedoes, filtered cigarettes, chic hairdos, Busby-Berkeley water theatrics, and some burlesque-inspired broad comedy are all welcome throwbacks to a more stylish era.

A movie this bubbly and good-natured would be tough for even the most hardened cynic to resist. So call me a cynic, but for all its breezy charm "LLL" never quite hits the high notes of Branagh's first cinematic foray into Shakespeare comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993). Gussying up one of the Bard's less-produced plays as a retro musical was a nifty idea, but the movie never quite lives up to the promise of its cutesy conceit.

Part of the problem is that the cast's singing and dancing skills are not exactly up to snuff. The shaggy-dog amateurishness of the dance numbers adds to the movie's "let's put on a show!" charm, but any comparisons to Ginger Rogers or Fred Astaire would be downright insulting. (Adrian Lester excepted -- this incredible talent sings, dances, and performs "Hamlet" like he was born for the part. What can't he do?) The choreography is modest enough to not embarrass the untrained actors' equally modest abilities, and the occasionally off-key renderings of Broadway standards also have an oddly appealing quality. Nonetheless, this is a musical, after all, and the slipshod singing and dancing give the impression that Branagh slapped the production together in a manic fit of inspiration and didn't have the time or the resources to smooth out the rough patches.

Branagh enthusiasts (and I count myself among them) will get a kick out of the singing, dancing, and Bard-penned bantering. "LLL" is so light, it practically vanishes. Yet even if you can't remember exactly what transpired as the credits roll, you'll probably have a couple of catchy showtunes swimming in your head and a warm sense of soft-focus nostalgia for bygone days. There are worse ways to spend an evening.

3/5 Let's Face the Music
  by Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States)
Wild horses couldn't get most of us to watch a full-length Shakespeare play starring Alicia Silverstone, but give the girl credit for really trying! (I do like the review below in which the reviewer criticizes Silverstone for speaking her dialogue with emphasis on every single word, it's true.) So even while I take off two stars for the terrible performance she gives, I add two stars because I think she's so great. What! A paradox worthy of the great Matthew Lillard. In any case she looks enchanting and her expressions in the cafe scenes with her girlfriends, as she glances from face to face, often seeming to anticipate who will be speaking next, give the viewer the feeling of being a pinball in a mighty pinball machine of the late 16th century. She must have been studying, or Branagh must have been feeding her, videotapes of old Cybill Shepherd movies like DAISY MILLER and AT LONG LAST LOVE to get everything that disastrously wrong on a syllable level... and yet the movie would be pretty dull without her.

Kenneth Branagh, why so many long, long long shots of the musical numbers like the one in "I've Got a Crush on You?" Is it to reassure us that the actors you picked are actually doing the dancing? Maybe so, for in the one number (the sexy "Let's Face the Music and Dance," in which all the stars wear elaborate masks) that uses extremely swift cuts and closeups of miscellaneous body parts a la FLASHDANCE, I was soon convinced that the real actors were participating only occasionally, and that you had hired Ann Reinking or whoever to play their body doubles for the Fosse-like choreography. I see that you persuaded Stanley Donen (and Martin Scorcese) to sign on as "presenters," whatever that means, but in those long static shots of Geraldine McEwan cavorting for ten minutes at a stretch along a green sward, you are displaying the Donen touch for sure.

Were you too old to play a youth in Love's Labours Lost? Maybe so, but I watched the whole picture just thinking you were the uncle to the other boys. Only after I went back and read the play did I see that Berowne is supposed to be no older, just a little wiser, than his three friends. Still you're great and I'm just sorry that the failure of this movie was such a setback for your career. But you wound up luckier than your leading lady whose career this bomb pretty much decimated. She was for five minutes the greatest star in the world, then you came along with this, and the Batman and Robin movie came along making her look chunky and dumb, and then it was curtains for a unique talent in the cinema.

2/5 Love, Labored and Lost
  by Amaranth (Northern California)
"Love's Labor's Lost" is one of the Bard's more bittersweet comedies. There's the joy of romantic love tempered with the bitter reality of war, and the original ending is open to question. As Berowne says, "This isn't a normal play. Jack does not get his Jill."

Kenneth Branagh decided to turn the Bard's bittersweet tale into a fluffy '30s musical, complete with fake newsreel footage. The Prince of Navarre (Alessandro Nivola) leads his friends to forswear women for study. However,when the Princess of France (Alicia Silverstone) stops by with her handmaidens, love and music is in the air. There are numerous campy musical sequences-- such as "Cheek to cheek" number where the young men are soaring overhead like puppets against a sky backdrop, and "Let's face the music and dance",a "sexy" number where the couples wear masks--that seems more of a tribute to Wild Orchid than William Shakespeare.

Kenneth Branagh,as Berowne,poetically speaks Shakespeare's poetry. One can say the script is strong despite the actors. Alicia Silverstone, Matthew Lillard and Nathan Lane give vapid readings. Poor Lane looks out of place as the comical Costard. It's nice to see interracial romance treated in an ordinary, everyday way--- but the cast is weak.

"Love's Labor's Lost" ends up labored and lost. With stilted choreography and a pretentious use of the Great American Songbook, it ends up a campy-- and fascinating-- failure,but not in the entertaining "Xanadu" sense. To paraphrase Shakespeare,it's all sound and funny, signifying nothing.