A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

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Michael Hoffman's 1999 version of Midsummer Night's Dream has some well advertised stars on the cover - Rupert Everett, Clalista Flockhart, Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer and Stanley Tucci - but I was more chuffed to see a lot of names that have perhaps become more familiar to me since: Christian Bale, Dominic West, David Strathairn and, oh my, Sam Rockwell! It's not a perfect adaptation of Shakespeare's greatest comedy, mostly because the Fairy World is poorly realized. There's a fine effort to throw in mythological elements, but the interior forest set never looks quite right, all gaudy golds and plastic leaves, all a little too theatrical for what they're attempting to do. With that casting, you can well imagine the accents are all over the place, but it only gets distracting when the actors don't really seem to understand the intent of their lines, which I'd say is fairly limited to Flockhart and Sophie Marceau. All is forgiven however - as if by Puck's apology - because the "comedic tragedy" of the play within the play is both genuinely funny and touching. This "hot ice" actually works, with much thanks to performance and staging. 8 years 7 months ago