Taglines: Love makes fools of us all.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream movie storyline. Shakespeare’s intertwined love polygons begin to get complicated from the start–Demetrius and Lysander both want Hermia but she only has eyes for Lysander. Bad news is, Hermia’s father wants Demetrius for a son-in-law. On the outside is Helena, whose unreturned love burns hot for Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander plan to flee from the city under cover of darkness but are pursued by an enraged Demetrius (who is himself pursued by an enraptured Helena).
In the forest, unbeknownst to the mortals, Oberon and Titania (King and Queen of the faeries) are having a spat over a servant boy. The plot twists up when Oberon’s head mischief-maker, Puck, runs loose with a flower which causes people to fall in love with the first thing they see upon waking. Throw in a group of labourers preparing a play for the Duke’s wedding (one of whom is given a donkey’s head and Titania for a lover by Puck) and the complications become fantastically funny.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a 1999 romantic comedy fantasy film based on the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. It was directed by Michael Hoffman. The ensemble cast features Kevin Kline as Bottom, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Everett as Titania and Oberon, Stanley Tucci as Puck, and Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, and Dominic West as the four lovers.
Film Review for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
ot luck Shakespeare is enjoying a special film vogue now, what with the tempting prospect of hearing a “forsooth” or “methinks” from the least likely sources. The strategy of choice is picking a travel agent’s dream setting, casting attractive actors no matter what (e.g., Keanu Reeves in “As You Like It”), giving an outrageous costume party and hoping for the best.
But even for the Leo-does-Romeo set these productions need more than visual flash if they hope to work. Take away smooth ensemble acting and a unifying vision, and you’re left with the dramatic equivalent of watching Noah load the ark.
Michael Hoffman’s fussy production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is just such a parade of incongruities, with performances ranging from the sublime to the you-know-what. Hoffman has transported the play’s humans and fairies to Tuscany, where they switch partners under the influence of trickery from Stanley Tucci’s mischievous Puck.
But there’s no magic potion to banish the film’s awkwardness or make it more than a string of intermittent acting highlights. Puck’s “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” looks like an understatement under the circumstances.
No doubt unwittingly, this “Midsummer Night’s Dream” shows how high the bar has been raised by “Shakespeare in Love.” The allure and cleverness of that film, not to mention its far more Shakespearean spirit, make it a hard act for a hodgepodge to follow.
Not even Michelle Pfeiffer’s commanding loveliness as the fairy queen Titania, and her ability to speak of such things as “my bower” with perfect ease, can offset the decision to have the actors grapple awkwardly with bicycles. Not even the digital butterflies that flutter through the opening credits look as magical as they should.
The hoodwinked characters of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are meant to be mismatched much of the time. But not like this. The distraught Helena, played as a hand-waving, eye-rolling ditz by Calista Flockhart, hardly fits into the same film with David Strathairn’s reserved Duke Theseus, or with Rupert Everett as a slinky Oberon.
Everett, like the inspired Kevin Kline as the ham actor Bottom, is utterly at ease with this material in ways that many other cast members are not. This Oberon makes himself seductive just by speaking, but the film isn’t taking any chances. It finds as many ways for Everett to lounge around bare-chested as the play will allow.
Similar directorial inspiration guides the love-struck adventure of the title, to the point where the film’s most nubile actors — among them Christian Bale as Demetrius, Anna Friel as Hermia and Dominic West as Lysander — wind up discreetly naked in the woods the morning after.
Unfortunately, that’s more memorable than just about anything else they do. Though West and especially Ms. Friel approach their roles with gratifying ease, Bale is once again given the cheesecake treatment and little occasion to rise above it. This production tarts up the play any way it can.
One ostensible attraction is the vast woodland set built on Fellini’s old Cinecitta sound stage, a murky fairy kingdom where much of the film takes place. Though Hoffman loads it with high-minded clutter that recalls his “Restoration,” he can’t change the fact that the film is stuck in dark, unappetizing surroundings despite its intermittent Italian scenery. The Tuscan hill town of Montepulciano is largely wasted here.
But it is in the town that Kline’s Bottom saunters into view, looking natty and faintly woebegone in ways that invoke Marcello Mastroianni’s courtly presence. Kline’s very appearance here is a relief, since the role of Bottom is so very right for him.
The play’s trajectory is never clearer than in chronicling Bottom’s actorly affectations, then watching him come to life in the bewitching presence of Ms. Pfeiffer’s Titania. Literally transformed into an ass, as the film uses ingenious donkey makeup and Kline actually brays in witty fashion, this Bottom carries with him all the story’s possibilities of tenderhearted redemption rising out of inspired folly.
The theatrical carryings-on of Bottom and company provide the film’s best attempts at comedy. Staging a play about Pyramus and Thisbe with a troupe including Bill Irwin, Roger Rees and Sam Rockwell (as the beauteous heroine), Bottom’s acting company delights its late-19th-century audience in ways Hoffman’s film can only occasionally manage.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)
Directed by: Michael Hoffman
Starring: Rupert Everett, Calista Flockhart, Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stanley Tucci, Christian Bale, Sophie Marceau, David Strathairn, Roger Rees, Dominic West
Screenplay by: Michael Hoffman
Production Design by: Luciana Arrighi
Cinematography by: Oliver Stapleton
Film Editing by: Garth Craven
Costume Design by: Gabriella Pescucci
Set Decoration by: Ian Whittaker
Art Direction by: Maria-Teresa Barbasso, Andrea Gaeta, Gianni Giovagnoni
Music by: Simon Boswell
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: May 14, 1999
Hits: 264
