Reviewed by Russell Baillie
Cast: Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Judi Dench
Director: John Madden
Where did Will Shakespeare get his ideas? Just off the top of that famously egg-shaped head?
Or what if, as this ebullient romantic comedy propounds, Romeo and Juliet came from art imitating his life? That he himself was the lovestruck chap under the balcony?
And what if he was given to open-neck shirts rather than frilly collars, brooding good looks, a full head of hair and preferred the bachelor lifestyle in downtown London rather than pottering about the cottage with Anne Hathaway up in Stratford-on-Avon?
Which is quite a lot of what-ifs.
Fortunately, Shakespeare in Love has a huge amount of fun answering them - convincingly, irreverently and affectionately.
There's a healthy disrespect for the textbook life and times of the Bard but it also manages a passionate celebration of his writings with abundant and sly references to many of his plays.
Though it's that aforementioned best-known of his dramas that is at the centre here. The film built around the writing and hasty staging of the play which starts out as a comedy titled Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter.
But as Shakespeare (Fiennes, brother of Ralph) becomes increasingly smitten with theatre-obsessed noblewoman Viola Le Dessaps (Paltrow), the play changes title and tack. And disguised as a man, Viola wins the role of Romeo. That's not the only complication.
There's a myriad of subplots involving rival theatre companies, playwrights and creditors, the theatre itself trying to win respectability in prudish times, even some Hollywood mickey-taking about the egos and percentages of producers, writers, actors and wannabes.
But it all ties together after an especially frenetic opening which even has Will off to an "analyst" to seek help for his writer's block.
That might sound all a bit Blackadder, but the movie still manages to conjure up a sense of Elizabethan England - and English - without making this past seem like a foreign country.
We get everybody from bawdy peasantry to Shakespeare's colourful acting company, to Viola's cad of an arranged husband-to-be Lord Wessex (Colin Firth) to the Virgin Queen herself (an imposing Dame Judi Dench) wandering in and out of the story.
Meanwhile, as the play itself unfolds and Will and Viola begin their dangerous liaisons, some crossdressed backstage (with Viola still wearing her Romeo moustache and breeches) others undressed back at her place. Rather sexy it all is, too.
Fiennes and Paltrow manage to generate quite a chemistry though it's as much down to that dialogue (co-written by practised Shakespeare re-inventor Tom Stoppard and directed by Mrs Brown helmer John Madden) which may bring on a irresistible urge for a quick sonnet afterwards.
No, we probably don't learn much what Shakespeare was really like and we were never meant to. But it does wonders for his image.
And yes, it's Shakespeare made crowd-pleasingly easy.
And funny, and sexy and oh so very smarty parts. But unlike those Bard know-it-alls who quote lines as a party-piece, the film is truly entertaining even when it's being a dreadful show-off.
Though it still has dramatic weight - the final scene of the play-within-the-play leaves most any other screen reworking of Romeo of Juliet, well, for dead.
Mostly you'll find Shakespeare in Love develops into a three-way race between your heart cheering the love story along, one funnybone preoccupied with the blatantly humorous and the other running a distant third hurdling the in-jokes and intertextual stuff.
It can all leave you quite pooped. But you'll be glad you entered.
Yes, as history Shakespeare in Love is wonderfully bunk but 16th century Eng Lit has never been quite this much fun. * * * * *
