In this Shakespearean farce, Hero (Kate Beckinsale) and her groom-to-be, Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard), team up with Claudio’s commanding officer, Don Pedro (Denzel Washington), the week before their wedding to hatch a matchmaking scheme. Their targets are sharp-witted duo Benedick (Kenneth Branagh) and Beatrice (Emma Thompson) — a tough task indeed, considering their corresponding distaste for love and each other. Meanwhile, meddling Don John (Keanu Reeves) plots to ruin the wedding.
“Much Ado About Nothing” is a dreamlike house party set in and around a magnificent Tuscan villa in the erotic heat of an Italian summer. The period is not specified, although it seems to be a distant, vaguely Renaissance past. Director Kenneth Branagh has taken a Shakespearean romantic comedy, the sort of thing that usually turns to mush on the screen, and made a movie that is triumphantly romantic, comic and, most surprising of all, emotionally alive. – NYT
Any modern film of Shakespeare must deal with the fact that many people in the audience will be unfamiliar with the play, and perhaps even with the playwright. Branagh deals with this fact by making “Much Ado” into a film that reinvents the story; this is not a film “of” a Shakespeare play, but a film that begins with the same materials and the wonderful language and finds its own reality. It is cheerful from beginning to end (since we can hardly take the moments of doom and despair seriously). – Roger Ebert
Starring Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton.
Note: Kenneth Branagh also directed King Henry V (1989).
May be suitable for older children.
Parents need to know that this very accessible Shakespeare adaptation gets the PG-13 rating because of a bunch of visible backsides in a jubilant bathing scene and a brief sex scene visible from afar (you’ll see a few thrusts but characters are clothed). The rest of the content is pretty mild: a couple bad guys get drunk, a death is faked, and a silly guard shouts “I am an ass!” and thinks it’s a compliment. – Common Sense Media