Shakespeare in Love

 1.5/4

Starring: Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Judi Dench

Rated R for Sexuality

"Shakespeare in Love" feels like one giant in-joke about Shakespeare and the theater.  Like the MCU, it's jam-packed with references, Easter eggs, and meta-humor.  Also like the MCU, such details can't camouflage the lack of a compelling plot and boring characters.  Unless you're a member of the target audience (Shakespeare scholars, not Comic-Con devotees, as it were), in which case it will set off enough moments of recognition that you won't care.  Apparently that was the thinking of the Academy when this otherwise lame period piece took home seven Oscars.  None of which it deserved.

Will Shakespeare (Fiennes) is desperately trying to get past his writer's block.  He's delaying his ever-in-debt patron, a man named Winslow (Rush) with the fiction that he has a play called "Romeo and Ethel: The Pirate's Daughter," not a word of which he has actually written.  Salvation comes when theater junkie Viola de Lesseps (Paltrow) enters his life.  Her parents are away for a couple of weeks, so she decides to try her hand at acting and ends up performing in Shakespeare's play, which evolves into his great tragedy "Romeo and Juliet."  They're instantly smitten with each other, but she is about to be married against her will to the pompous Lord Essex (Firth).

The plot of "Shakespeare in Love" feels like a Shakespeare play that the Bard never wrote.  It has all the required elements: gender-bending characters, mistaken identities, romance, and poetic dialogue.  The screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard and the direction by John Madden do a solid job of juggling all the references and subplots (of which there are a few).  The problem is that all the successful material is tangential to the central love story, which just doesn't work.

A romance can only succeed if the audience cares about the lovers, and I didn't.  It's hard to get the audience to swoon when both of the leads are sorely miscast.  In the right role, Gwyneth Paltrow can be a talented and beguiling actress.  This is not the right role.  The actress is never at home with her dialogue or her character, and comes across as wooden and stiff.  Equalling her in the contest of bad casting is Joseph Fiennes, who plays the greatest writer in the English language like he's in a Hallmark movie.  We're supposed to believe that this dweeb redefined storytelling as we know it?  It's impossible to believe that this loser could get himself out of a traffic ticket, let along write "Romeo and Juliet."  As bad as he was in "Elizabeth," which was released in the same year, he's worse here.  In all fairness, the two do have some chemistry, but it's fleeting and never very strong.

They're surrounded by a who's who cast of British character actors, which would be a consolation if it weren't for the fact that it only highlights the deficiencies in the main duo.  It would be a tall order to carry a British period piece about Shakespeare against the likes of Geoffrey Rush (who is Australian, but never mind), Tom Wilkinson, Colin Firth, Martin Clunes, Simon Callow, Imelda Staunton, and Mark Williams.  It's a task that neither is up to.  Will and Viola are boring, and the film only comes alive when they're off camera or, occasionally, when they aren't speaking.  Judi Dench is on hand in an Oscar-winning performance as Queen Elizabeth, although she doesn't have much to do but look authoritative and spit out dry one-liners.  Ben Affleck stars in a small role as star actor with a big ego, and is actually quite good.

"Shakespeare in Love" has the dubious distinction of being responsible for two of the Academy's most bone-headed upsets.  The first, is obviously, that it beat our "Saving Private Ryan" for the top prize.  Had "Shakespeare in Love" been anywhere near respectable, such a loss would have been eye-rolling.  As it is, it gives credence to the thought that Harvey Weinstein essentially bought himself the Oscar by engaging in aggressive lobbying (which Spielberg refused to participate in).  The other is that Gwyneth Paltrow beat Cate Blanchett (or anyone else, really) for the Best Actress Oscar for what is easily her worst performance.  The term "shaking my head" doesn't seem to do it justice.  Still, Spielberg and Blanchett got the last laugh.  "Saving Private Ryan" is widely viewed as a game changing classic, while this turkey is deservedly forgotten except for when someone compiles a list of Oscar Oopsies.  And Cate Blanchett well on her way to becoming the next Meryl Streep. while the best Gwyneth can do is Pepper Potts in the MCU and shill products from her herbal remedy company Goop Inc.

The bottom line is that this movie is a bore.  The only recognition it deserves is its notoriety.  And the only people who could fall for its dubious charms are the people who are predisposed to liking it.

Just like the MCU.