Brilliant and touching

Absolutely the worst movie.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Critics were pretty divided on this, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Probably my second favorite of Branagh's films (both Shakespeare and not) after "Henry V". It's a sweet and joyful affair, with a load of fun performances, and a re-imagining by Branagh of the story taking place in 1880s Japan (!), which seems an odd idea, but actually ends up working quite well. Bryce Dallas Howard is a terrific Rosalind, perhaps my favorite I've seen. She makes the text completely comprehensible without losing it's poetry. She's funny, sexy and wonderfully lovable. (Why she hasn't become a bigger star I'll never know). David Oyelowo is her match as Orlando, making his love-sick swooning and single-minded romantic obsession tremendously appealing and human – never whiny (a danger in this role), and never losing his considerable charisma and smolder. This is a rare case where on-screen love at first sight is believable, endearing and hot. There are terrific supporting turns from Kevin Kline, Brian Blessed (excellent in a double role), Adrian Lester, Janet McTeer and Alfred Molina (just to name a few). There are places where one can carp: even in a comedy Howard's disguise as a boy would fool no one, and makes a number of moments feel silly (would it have been so hard to at least put all of her wild and distinctive hair under her cap instead of letting much of it come flowing out?). Sometimes Branagh interrupts his excellent, more classic visual style with a slightly wobbly stedicam 360, which call more attention to themselves than they should. And a couple of minor characters feel a less than needed in this cut down version. But those are small complaints. This is Shakespeare that isn't 'good for you', but that is as fun and playful (and occasionally quite tense) as any wonderful romantic comedy. Yes all the poetry and insights into human affairs are there, but they flow naturally, instead of making one feel force fed. I'd imagine this would be a great film for teens studying the play. It makes it immediate and alive, passionate and sexy.

I've always loved Shakespeare, ever since reading Twelfth Night 10 years ago in my last year in primary school. And I have great respect for Kenneth Branagh. You can clearly tell by his acting and how he directs Shakespeare that he respects the bard's writing while making it accessible for a wider audience. His casting choices are often spot-on too, yes with the odd questionable choice but never serious enough to bring the film drown too much. All of his Shakespeare film adaptations are well worth watching at least once with his weakest being Love's Labours Lost and my personal favourite being Much Ado About Nothing. As You Like It is not as good as his Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and Henry V(I need to check if his 80s Twelfth Night would count, if so that applies too), but definitely superior to Love's Labours Lost. It does have its flaws, the Japanese culture is not all that authentic and Rosalind's disguise is completely unconvincing- nowhere near masculine enough- that it does raise laughs at how Orlando could fail to see through it. However, it does look absolutely beautiful with stunning locations, sumptuous costumes and some of the most beautiful photography in any of Branagh's movies. The music is witty and lively as well as sweet and lilting. The writing is amusing and poetic, in short faithful in spirit to Shakespeare.The story is well-paced and still has that sense of fun, and the idea to have Branagh to only direct rather than do that and cast himself as well was a refreshing one. I personally have no idea with Branagh casting himself in his films actually, criticise him all you want about him being self-indulgent, I think it further reinforces how talented and versatile he is.(Besides he is not the only one to do it, Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier did it too and Alfred Hitchcock appeared in cameos in a lot of his films). The cast are great. Bryce Dallas Howard is beautiful and charming, and Romola Garai is adorable. Jade Jeffries and Janet McTeer are also well cast. David Oyelowo is a dashing Orlando, and doesn't make him too much of a pretty-boy and not much else. Richard Briers as always is a pleasure to watch, while Alfred Molina is delightfully silly and Kevin Kline, while not as well used as he was in 1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream, is also sterling, doing justice to the play's best soliloquies. I do absolutely agree with another reviewer with the lack of any praise for Brian Blessed. He does two roles that are completely different from his personality and anything else he's done, and gives Frederick some arch without ever resorting to camp(he's also quite nuanced in this role) and Duke Snr a surprising amount of poignant subtlety, bringing to life Shakespeare's writing in the way not many people today do in one role. Overall, Branagh has done better but I still think As You Like It was much better than I heard it was, which prior to watching was mostly negativity or indifference. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Until seeing this recent Branagh adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It, I thought that I and my 8th-grade classmates years ago at a private girls' school had butchered this play as badly as possible. However, apparently, I was wrong. There is a lot that is seriously wrong with this film, despite some strong individual contributions from David Oyelowo, Adrien Lester, Richard Briers, and a couple others. However, overall, not only does this film border on incomprehensibility, but it also discourages one from ever wishing to read or see this play again. The worst aspect of this film by far is the patronizing, stereotypical "orientalisms" of the setting in Japan. Not for one moment is the story at all credible within this environment. Branagh does not seem to have spent any time at all understanding the time period into which he sets the play. What are English dukes doing setting up their fiefdoms in late 19th century Japan, let alone having private armies of ancient Japanese costume-clad soldiers? Every cliché that the least educated Westerner has about Japan is thrown into this shoddy blender. Why has Branagh set this story in Japan? I optimistically thought, at the outset, perhaps he's reverse-engineering the concept Kurosawa so brilliantly and successfully used in Ran, and Throne of Blood. And a truly imaginative and profound director could have made a good case for doing this. But Branagh does not attempt to place us in a setting which makes sense, so there is no explanation for why we are in Japan, other than that Branagh is desperate to call attention to himself, or that he wants an excuse to dress up all the lovers in kimonos at the end. The character of Touchstone looks clearly ridiculous, as if he had been air-lifted into the forest from some other planet. The character of Rosalind is seriously miscast, and appears to be less of a personage than Celia, also probably miscast in the overacting Romola Garai. In the play, Rosalind dazzles us with a driving intelligence wholly lacking here. And what are we to make of the casting choices of Oliver and Orlando? Although both parts are finely acted, in fact their contributions were the best parts of this film in my opinion, to imagine two black British lovers courting 19th century white women in the Japanese countryside, while everyone else there seems to be white, just seems totally anachronistic and jarring. Had the cast been totally mixed, it would have seemed less out of place, or had the setting not been filled with quaint Japanisms, it could have worked. Obviously, nothing needs to make sense in Branagh's brain. I'm not sure I would have been surprised had a couple of the characters shown up dressed as 9th century Vikings, or as Russian boyars. I also found the music annoying. Britain is full of divine singers: couldn't KB have found some better voices to do the singing? Couldn't he have found some less whiny music? And the music at the end sounds like an American musical comedy from the 1930s. Watching the red-haired Rosalind dressed up as a geisha in the ending scenes was just silly.In short, Mr. Branagh seems to have no real appreciation or understanding for the characters and the themes of the play, and stoops to the level of the comic-book in this film. If he has so little confidence in the merits of the play as it is written, why bother making a movie of it at all?

After Henry V (which is objectively the best movie ever made), Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet (two-disk DVD arrived in the same shipment as this), and Love's Labor Lost (haven't seen it), produced between 1989 and the present, Kenneth Branagh adapts the pastoral comedy As You Like It as a film. Sadly, this was never released in theatres outside of Italy (of course, the Bard isn't a huge draw at the box office), but it's now out on HBO DVD (and has a really annoying set of commercials appended to the start that you can't fast-forward or "menu" through).Anyway, when I first heard that Branagh was directing this, I was both thrilled and a bit disappointed, the latter owing to the decision to film one of the comedies rather than one of the tragedies or histories (I'd kill to see him film Macbeth; what's that, witches? You say that if I...). But, take what you can get. Anyway, this is set in 1880s Japan "for some reason" (as one review put it), and, truly, the setting doesn't add a whole lot. Apart from ninjas, which are always cool.For those who don't know the plot (which, there's a good chance you mightn't, this not being Hamlet): The good Duke Senior has been banished from his kingdom by his evil brother, Duke Frederick, and fled with some accompanying lords (most notably Jacques) into the forest of Arden (here pronounced "Ard-en" rather than "Ar-den"); however, the good Duke's daughter, Rosalind, is still in court, being kept their by the evil Frederick because his own daughter, Celia, refuses to live without her. In the play, the sense is that this has been the case for a while, but the film actually begins with the banishment, so the whole affair from start to finish seems to last for a couple of weeks. Anyway, Frederick eventually decides to banish Rosalind too, because everyone loves her and feels sorry for her; however, Celia runs off with her, and they take the court clown (Touchstone) with them for no particular reason. Also fleeing into the forest are Orlando and his servant Adam, to escape the wrath of Orlando's jerk older brother; Orlando is in love with Rosalind. Rosalind adopts the guise of a man named Ganymede (two maids shouldn't travel alone; although they then decide to bring an actual man with them, although he's a clown, so maybe he doesn't count), and Celia starts calling herself Aliena, and they settle down in a shepherd's cottage. There are about five different love stories preceding from this point. And eventually everyone lives happily ever after.In terms of actors, let's first account for the usual Branagh people (Shakespeare roles in brackets):Richard Briers (Bardolph, Leonato, Polonius, Nathaniel) is Adam, Orlando's (and Orlando's father's) faithful servant. A rather small part for him, but he's got one great little scene early on. - Patrick Doyle (Soldier, Balthazar, better known as his composer, but whenever there's singing to be done, he's in) as Amiens. He actually has some dialogue other than singing. - Jimmy Yuill (Captain Jamy, Friar Francis, Alexander, Dull; perennial bit-player) as Corin the shepherd. - And last, but certainly not least, the man, the myth, the legend: Brian Blessed (Duke of Exeter, Antonio, King Hamlet's Ghost). Brian Blessed fans, this is your movie, because he plays not one, but two parts: both good Duke Senior and evil Duke Frederick (one wears white, the other wears black).Branagh himself is conspicuously absent here (he almost played the part of Touchstone or Jacques, but ultimately cast Alfred Molina and Kevin Kline in those parts; Molina is great as a very Chaplin-esquire character; Kline has the famous "All the world's a stage" soliloquy). Despite this being set in Japan, there are only two Japanese actors worth noting, playing Sylvius and Phoebe (the pathetic shepherd and his cold mistress), but we also have two black actors as brothers Orlando and Oliver (at least we're not being sold Keanu and Denzel as siblings this time). Romola Garai is Celia, and she's also quite good (mostly she does physical comedy/mugging to all the craziness going on around her).And finally, there's Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind. She is, simply, great; she's the equal of Emma Thompson or Kate Winslet in Branagh's other Shakespeare films. She has what would seem to be the difficult role of pretending to be a man, but it's not actually hard at all, because the director's strategy seems to be to have everyone just act like she looks like a man, without making any attempt to actually make her seem one (her disguise really amounts to cutting her hair shorter, and occasionally wearing a hat). She's a delight the whole way through, and most of the actual humour really comes from the surreal way everyone acts like she's a man when really she's Bryce Dallas Howard with a haircut and (occasionally) a hat.Now, on to negatives; it really comes down to the fact that this is a rather slight play, and thus a rather slight film. There's nothing remotely approaching any of the dozens of profound moments in Henry V here (which, again: best film ever); it's mostly just fun performances and witty character interaction. All the same, if you enjoy Branagh and/or Shakespeare's comedies, I'd recommend giving it a look.And Kenneth? Seriously, Macbeth.