Average Rating: 4.7/10
Reviews Counted: 14
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 9
No consensus yet.
Release Date: Sep 1, 2006 Wide
liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 4,935
Director Kenneth Branagh tackles the works of William Shakespeare for the fifth time in his career as a filmmaker with this adaptation of one of The Bard's most accessible works. Rosalind is the daughter of a banished duke, and lives among a community of Westerners living in 19th century Japan. When her father, the duke, is suddenly banished, the frightened girl is forced to flee for the Forest of Arden lest she risk being executed by her malevolent uncle. Joining Rosalind on her flight to the
Sep 1, 2006 Wide
Sep 25, 2007
Picturehouse
All Critics (15) | Fresh (5) | Rotten (10) | DVD (1)
Fun retelling, but longer than teens will like it.
Branagh's film suffers when that boldness does not go far enough, creating an adaptation that trades depth and cultural exploration for a few quick fireworks; it is not so much Kurosawa's Macbeth as Memoirs of a Geisha.
Energetic and entertaining, but it's like a long episode of an over-talky, out-of-control soap opera.
It's not an unsuccessful adaptation. But it rarely catches fire as one of Shakespeare's most popular plays should.
Kenneth Branagh directs this pedestrian spin on the Shakespearean comedy that proves stubbornly resistant to his boisterous brand of all-star panto.
Kenneth Branagh gamely continues to put Shakespeare on film, and audiences continue to ignore them.
Kenneth Branagh is in danger of becoming the next Kenneth Branagh, in a career of serial self-replication as our last unstoppable screen Shakespearean.
Branagh's direction is fluent, surefooted, a little broad sometimes; his ingenious Japanese staging recreates the wrestling match as a wacky sumo contest. It's elegant and Howard is very good.
Faced with As You Like It, one of the Bard's more tiresome plays, Branagh's direction loses conviction and his storytelling lacks the engaging enthusiasm of his previous Shakespeares.
Smart casting and stand-out performances don't compensate for the twee source play and an over-ambitious screenplay from Branagh.
Unremarkable take on the Bard's cross-dressing comedy, ostentatiously relocated to 19th-century Japan though wholly shot in the Home Counties.
With the director setting such a leisurely pace, the seventh step into total inertia takes hold well before the curtain drops.
Branagh's fifth foray into celluloid Shakespeare brings us this rather stodgy version of the Bard's wise comedy of old Japan.
While diverting in parts, this struggles to make a convoluted plot engaging. We're still loving Romola Garai and Bryce Dallas Howard, though.
[A]nyone who thinks that Shakespeare is a chore to be suffered needs to see how fresh and refreshing and sweet and enlightening and simply pleasant his wicked-sharp words can be...
Here's one that snuck completely under my radar, probably because it was apparently made-for-HBO (which I don't have) and not released theatrically. I like Branagh, and I like Kline, but Bryce Dallas Howard in the lead? I'll pass... right?Well, I gave it a shot. Kenneth Branagh has successfully returned to the
April 23, 2008The awful confusion of Shakespeare's novel itself is a confusion, imagine a movie about it...
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