'Shakespeare in Love' a merry olde farce

http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/movies/lfilm433.htm

12/17/99- Updated 01:35 PM ET
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY


The Bard has writer's block in the art house hit-to-be Shakespeare in
Love, though given the state of his career in 1593, he's just a bard
with a lower-case "b." London's rival Curtain and Rose theaters are
fighting to land young Will's latest, but the promising playwright is
at a loss penning the play — a romance about a pirate's daughter,
featuring lovers named Romeo and Ethel.

So far, the results couldn't be more off the mark if they were Fred
and Ethel. Yet by the time this accessibly brainy screen charmer
wraps up on its highest notes, we'll have seen the creative process
work its way to perfection and had a series of escalating belly laughs
along the way. Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard have written one of the
year's smartest scripts, and Mrs. Brown director John Madden gets a
chance to show a funny side that's previously been submerged.

Every writer needs a muse, and Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) at least
finds inspiration in the luminous and sexually willing Lady Viola
(Gwyneth Paltrow). Unfortunately, she's mired in a forced engagement
to an insufferable lord she loathes (Colin Friel), who wants to whisk
her across the Atlantic to his Virginia tobacco fields.

Viola also finds herself stage-struck in the Elizabethan era, when
women are forbidden to appear on the boards. Her solution is to dress
as a man (Twelfth Night echoes abound here) and win the Romeo role
without her playwright lover's awareness — initially, at least — of
her identity.

It's a tossup as to which is more fun: Seeing the historical likes of
Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, rival playwright Christopher Marlowe (Rupert
Everett) and others interacting in sprightly situations, or watching a
cast of hot actors — Ben Affleck, Geoffrey Rush and Tom Wilkinson
included — hustling and bustling in farcical fashion on stage and off
as the troupe cuts, pastes and modifies a flop into Romeo and Juliet.
The film's one weak link is Fiennes, who just isn't very imposing when
everyone else around him is. Paltrow, in fact, makes her strongest
screen impression to date after a series of indifferent movies and
roles.

As Elizabeth, Judi Dench is such a smash that she'll probably get a
deserved Oscar nomination for a relatively small role — one that'll
hopefully match an academy nod for the script. This makes it two
brilliant queens in a row for the actress, following her Mrs. Brown
nomination as Queen Victoria. By now, we'd have to give Dench the
benefit of the doubt were someone to cast her as Queen Latifah.


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