William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

William Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

Cast, Etc.
Dir. Michael Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Stanley Tucci, Anna Friel, Calista Clockhart, Christian Bale, Dominic West, David Strathairn, Sophie Marceau, Roger Rees, Bernard Hill, score by Simon Boswell, PG-13, 1999

Synopsis
Mirth and merriment surround four young lovers.

Review
There's nothing deep about this play, nor about the movie. The whole point is just fun and frivolity. Set in 19th-century Italy, the plot finds Hermia (Friel) betrothed to Demetrius (Bale), but she doesn't love him. She loves, instead, Lysander (West), and this has brought conflict as Hermia's father, Egeus (Hill), doesn't like Lysander and wants Hermia to marry Demetrius. This causes Hermia and Lysander to run off to the woods in order to escape the situation, but along the way, Demetrius gets wind of it (via Hermia's friend, Helena [Flockhart], who is in love with Demetrius herself) and sets off in pursuit. Demetrius follows Hermia, Helena follows Demetrius, and the merriment begins. Add to the mix the fairy king Oberon (Everett) and queen Titania (Pfeiffer) having their own love problems, a trickster named Puck (Tucci), and a mix-up in the application of a love potion, and you get a classic Shakespeare comedy. While not rip-roaring laugh-out-loud funny, it is rather humorous. A subplot concerning local men preparing a play to perform for Duke Thesus (Strathairn) gives us the great character of Nick Bottom (Kline), an actor with loads of self-confidence, but no common sense, who gives us a lot of the laughs to be found in the movie. The film is lush and vibrant, with great sets and atmosphere, as well as some nifty special effects, which you really wouldn't expect to see in a Shakespeare movie, but are necessary to bring across the world of the fairies into which Nick stumbles. Tucci is funny, but understated, as Puck, and Everett and Pfeiffer are pretty good as the fairy royalty. The lovers tend to fall by the wayside as Nick's story gets going, but since it is all about them, they come back full circle. The play at the end of the film that the common men get to perform is hilarious. Highlights
Kline; the sets; bicycles; Nick's transformation

Rating
I give this film a wine spritzer rating; it's light, funny, lounging-about kind of fare. As a Shakespeare-play-made-into-a-film, it's pretty good; as a comedy, it's a bit above average. There really is no villain, unless you count Hermia's father, but he doesn't play that big of a role. The score by Boswell is fun and fantastic-sounding, but is overshadowed by the opera and classical music also used.