What if Shakespeare was a fraud? Would you care? I wouldn’t. Shakespeare is just an abstract name attached to some of the most enduring works of writing of all time; for fuck’s sake, he said himself “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” So why should anybody care if Shakespearean plays were actually written by a man named William Shakespeare or Ben Jonson or the Lord of Oxford? Answer: They won’t. Care, that is.
The story is decent, a man trying to leverage art to overthrow an unscrupulous British advisor, dripping in GAME OF THRONES and THE TUDORS high-court conspiracy, some medieval bloodshed, plenty of good old-fashioned boozing and philandering that reminds you how great life was before cell-phone-camera-scandals and how a true bender ends with you waking up in a muddy ditch with a horse drawn carriage slowly rolling by.
But it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. The ads are all over town and they’re awful. They say nothing about the great cast like Rhys Ifans (the best part of THE REPLACEMENTS, him and that hot broad who falls in love with Shane Falco), Vanessa Redgrave (a possible GILF if you’re into that thing), David Thewlis (Prof lupin for Potter fans) and some cameos from Jamie Campbell Bower (did a good job in CAMELOT, even if nobody was watching).
What a man has to ask is: Why, Roland Emmerich, why?
The problem with Hollywood is that, once a man gets pigeon-holed into a genre he can never leave it. The truth is, though, that usually people fall into those genres because it’s what they’re best at and when they try to expand their horizons shit falls apart. Emmerich made a name with movies like INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE PATRIOT, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, 2012. So why the fuck would he do a movie about playwrites and non-violent coups in Elizabethan England? You’re not Martin Scorcese, the Coen Brothers, Stanley Kubrick or Woody Allen so what makes you think you can stray outside your genre?
That explains this muddled script. The lackluster advertising that seems to cater to nobody. The lack of identity surrounding this movie echoes a script that wavers between the “rags to riches” charm of A KNIGHT’S TALE, the “Shakespeare Behind the Scenes Love and Writing” dramatic stylings of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, and the furious Elizabethan world in ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE. Even more, this script has a male-driven plot but comes across as a chick-flick period drama. But instead of making it into a date movie that works for both, it will alienate everybody. Except maybe the island of Briton and the few Shakespearean historical fiction buffs hiding in Universities across America.
Maybe Shakespeare wasn’t the writer of HAMLET, ROME AND JULIET, MERCHANT OF VENICE, HENRY IV, V, and VI. Doesn’t mean the writing attributed to him was any less amazing. And even more, seeing as he died 400 years ago, the name no longer really refers to one person. Yes, we all aspire for immortality, that’s a man’s lot. But the proof lies in the pudding. That is, in 500 years will it really matter whether the writer was an illiterate actor named Bill Shakespeare or a noble bastard or even you? No, all that matters is that it was created, that your words and, in that way, your soul live on.
There’s the rub – just like every other point, this movie feels like it’s gonna fall flat, like a Technicolor oil puddle. Look for it to open somewhere around $6 million at most.
- Ryan
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