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Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I notice a lot of the most negative reviews of this movie are from hardcore Shakespeare buffs, so I'll start by noting that I am not one of those. Shakespeare is challenging to understand and this particularly play has some serious issues with it, and I watch Shakespeare adaptations in part just to see how people repackage the Bard and try to deal with the complexity of the language. So for me, a black and white, modernized version of Much Ado About Nothing with a millennial vibe is appealing.The movie does a good job with the dialogue, with actors speaking in a reasonably conversational tone that avoids "I AM ACTING Shakespeare" pitfalls. The cast is uniformly excellent, but I found Amy Ackerling and Nathan Fillion particularly effective. And while, as usual, I sometimes lost the thread of individual sentences, overall it's a very witty play, even if it has a plot that was probably absurd even at the time.I will say that overall I'd give the edge the Kenneth Branaugh Emma Thompson movie version. As likable as the cast in this one is, the talent of the leads in the earlier version has an electrifying quality lacking here. But it's definitely worth watching.

Updated to modern times but with all of Shakespeare's archaic (if poetic) dialogue intact, Joss Whedon's 'Much Ado About Nothing' is one of the strangest big screen Shakespeare adaptations to date. The film innovatively adds cars and iPhones to the tale, however, with dialogue and characters that differ so little from the way Shakespeare wrote them, the novelty value dries up rather quickly and what else the film has to offer is debatable. The black and white photography is sumptuous, but it does not exactly add a lot to the tale and the performances are hardly spectacular. Whedon does include some unique comedy touches of his own though; not all of them work (a pratfall down the stairs) but Alexis Denisof as Benedick showing off by doing one-armed push-ups and muscles flexes works well as a humorous extension of the character's sheer arrogance. There are also some subtle funny moments to be had in characters sprouting Shakespearean dialogue while sitting next to dollhouses and calling each other by titles such as 'prince' to adhere to the Bard's original dialogue. For a daringly different take on Shakespeare, the film is worth a look. One's mileage may vary though depending on how familiar one is with the source material and how much humour one finds the notion of modern day folks talking as if they are stuck in the sixteenth century.

Well It lives up to it's title I guess. There is in fact much ado about nothing. It's an adaptation of a Shakespeare play, so I'm not going to complain about things like characters being overly cheesy, characters making rather rash and stupid decisions, and characters monologuing to themselves. That being said, lets talk about the movie. It's just okay, nothing super amazing for anyone who doesn't love Shakespeare. The relationship and betrayal plot lines didn't do that much for me. The only thing really making this worth watching is the writing. Its written in old English and it never ceased to amaze me that someone had to write that. But yeah, besides that not really worth watching and I can't really recommend it.

The trailer of this film is magnificent: stylish black & white images of well-dressed people gathering in a beautiful mansion, accompanied by the cool sound of St-Germain, and words like 'obsession, hatred, sex, power, deceit and truth' projected on the screen in fast succession. But unfortunately the trailer is much better than the film. The idea of transposing the original play, written 415 years ago by William Shakespeare, to a present day context, including iPhones, surveillance cameras and posh cars, is very daring. The result is essentially a modern day romantic comedy about two couples falling in love, but with 16th century dialogue. At first, this feels strange. A lot of concentration is needed in order to understand the dialogue. During the first fifteen minutes, you have to get used to the concept. But after an hour or so, the effect wears off and you realize it is just a gimmick. I think the appreciation of this gimmick is a matter of personal taste and preference. My opinion is that the combination of 21st century characters speaking 16th century language doesn't work well. It feels unnatural and strained. Although I must say that the actors do a great job: their performance is as smooth as possible with these lines. Director Joss Whedon made this film as a hobby project. Instead of going on vacation, he shot the film in 12 days in his own house, with actors he knew well from previous projects. To save costs, he shot in black & white. It is a nice coincidence that this choice also helps to make the film look stylish and trendy.