7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Stunning new vision of Shakespeare's classic comedy. When Leonato, the Governor of Messina, is visited by his friend Don Pedro, he is accompanied by two of his officers: Benedick and Claudio. Claudio falls for Leonato's daughter Hero, while Benedick verbally spars with Beatrice, the governor's niece. A series of comic and tragic events help keep the two couples from truly finding happiness—but then again, perhaps love may prevail in the end!
Starring: Amy Acker, Emma Bates, Sara Blindauer, Alexis Denisof, Nathan FillionRomance | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
My wife and I went on one of our first dates together to see the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing, and if memory serves, we may have even exchanged our first kiss goodnight after that evening out, a testament perhaps to that film's romantic allure. While Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet probably caught the zeitgeist of the nineties more appropriately than Branagh’s intentionally purist take on Shakespeare did (or frankly was meant to), there’s an ineluctable sweetness and even opulence to the Branagh film that seemed to have perfectly caught both the ebullience of the farcical elements of Shakespeare’s play as well as some of the more poignant, yearning subtext. Joss Whedon’s 2012 version is an entirely different beast, for better or worse, one that plays almost like Woody Allen doing a screwball comedy version of The Bard (think A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, only with more actual Shakespeare), replete with black and white visuals, quasi-improvisatory sounding dialogue (despite it being more or less unadulterated Shakespeare) and an informal ethos which is distinctly at odds with the more structured world of England’s most famous playwright and poet. This approach will seem pretentious and off putting to some, while probably reaching just as many as an interesting and even compelling take on the material. Whedon himself admits in one of the two commentaries included on this Blu-ray that he saw Much Ado About Nothing as something of a (literal) home movie (the film was shot in Whedon’s own Los Angeles mansion), and a chance to reunite with longtime friends who had regularly met to read through various Shakespeare works, after Whedon’s nearly year long absence while he made The Avengers. That may therefore label this Much Ado About Nothing as the very model of a vanity project, and while that may be true, there’s also a refreshing honesty to Whedon’s approach here, one that is less reliant on glamorous sets and costumes and more on the actual inner lives of the characters.
Much Ado About Nothing is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As mentioned above in the main body of the review, Whedon shot this on the fly with handheld digital cameras in and around his own home, and this therefore does not have the glossy (some might even say artificial) ambience of Whedon's The Avengers. The black and white image here is nicely crisp and well defined, offering solid blacks and good gray scale, and with excellent fine detail which is nonetheless occasionally mitigated by blown out contrast. Whedon seems to want the backgrounds of sunny southern California to glow ever so slightly, and that tends to lead to a slight bleed through (for want of a better term) of blooming whites penetrating things like doors and windows. There are also just a couple of very brief moments of slight noise spiking when the film gets into less brightly lit scenes, but you have to look quickly to catch them.
Much Ado About Nothing's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 comes fitfully to life in several of the more crowded scenes, where surround activity upticks appreciably, but this is by its very nature a wordy piece which doesn't offer a lot of opportunity for overwhelming sonic activity. When the film moves outdoors, there are occasional nice ambient environmental effects, and Whedon also contributes the score (did he also manage craft services?) that spills into the surrounds quite pleasingly.
For personal (and perhaps obvious) reasons, I frankly much prefer Branagh's take on this material, but Whedon fans especially will find this yet another example of what an unbridled, versatile talent he is. The modern dress and setting provide a perhaps ironically anachronistic element here which (for some at least) may be yet one more obstacle, insurmountable or not, to delving into the "thickness" of Shakespeare's language. Whedon may have hoped that this approach would at least lessen the visual strangeness of the play, but it seems more like shorthand here than the result of any overarching vision. Despite these qualms, Much Ado About Nothing offers some extremely winning performances and a nicely fluid filming. Recommended.
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