Kenneth Branagh – Much Ado About Nothing
Hamlet and Henry V are the prestige efforts in Ken’s CV, but MAAN is the most fun by far. A wonderful romantic comedy, played straight rather than being artificially and unnecessarily comtemporised, Branagh had confidence in the ability of audiences to make sense of Shakespeare’s original text in a bright and breezy setting, with the benefit of an unbelievably star-studded cast to help bring it all to life. Alongside Branagh and Emma Thompson, the cast included Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves, Kate Beckinsale, Imelda Staunton, Brian Blessed, Richard Briers and Robert Sean Leonard.
The barbed interplay between Branagh and Thompson is an unalloyed delight – witty, eloquent, sharp and still feeling utterly contemporary in its sexual politics. Kate Beckinsale gets a little screechy at times and Keanu Reeves perhaps has more trouble than most adapting his surfer persona to the more rigorous requirements of Shakespeare’s turn of phrase, but everyone acquits themselves excellently and if these days there might be a bit too much cynical eye-rolling at the “all works out in the end”-ness of it all, if we can shed that cynicism and rejoice in good old-fashioned romance and fun, this will hopefully lodge itself as one of your favourites. It ought to.