Ein Sommernachtstraum

Though some critics have dumped on this film, I was charmed by it. The movie literally sparkles. The settings are full of rich colors and magical lighting. The romantic classical music is all well chosen to help induce the hypnotic or dreamlike qualities. And the cast is an utter delight.

This is a fluffy cloud of fairy dust -- just as Shakespeare intended.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a very complicated play, and can get very silly at times, and this film is surprisingly faithful to the play. Yes, there was an attempt to partially modernise it, therefore the script wasn't as good as it could have been. The film itself is lovingly designed, with lavish costumes, stunning sets(my favourite being the wood set) and handsome cinematography. The music was lovely with clever use of music by the likes of Mendelssohn and Verdi. I thought the acting was very good indeed, Kevin Kline stealing the show as Bottom, most of the time hilarious, especially in the play scene, when we are shown what a bad actor Bottom really is. Michelle Pfeiffer is lovely also, and Rupert Everett is very charming also as Oberon. Callista Flockhart convinces also as Helena, and Stanley Tucci has a ball as Puck. The direction is competent, but my only other criticism is that the film is a little overlong. Overall, I genuinely enjoyed this film, not as good as Much Ado About Nothing(with Kenneth Branagh) or Macbeth (with Jon Finch), so I will happily award it 8/10. Bethany Cox.

A tale of gods and mortals and that most confusing of subjects – love. With relationships confused on earth, things become very simple when Puck is given reign to cast love spells on several people to create a complex tangle of love that shows that love never runs straight or true.

I'm that I will be seen as some sort of idiot for not liking this film but, in some vague sort of defence, I'd like to point out that I have seen and enjoyed many other Shakespeare adaptations on the screen and enjoyed many of them. The problem I had with this film was that more time had been spent on the visual presentation rather than the presentation of the story. For this reason I though the film looked really nice and had real imagination and flair behind it – but the plot was not given as much work.

I like to think that I am not stupid, but, were it not for the fact that I had a rough knowledge of the story prior to watching this version, I would have really struggled to get a hold of what was going on, as it was I still found it difficult to keep up with. I would have appreciated it more had the film been a little kinder in helping me understand the characters and the plot without relying on me to catch and understand every word (which I couldn't).

I can read Shakespeare and understand the dialogue fine, however when it is coming at me at machine gun pace, I'll struggle and need the visual aspect of the story to help me out a little bit by making the film free to clutter and easy to understand. I'm afraid much of it was lost on me as I struggled to keep up, and the film suffered as a result. Visually of course, it is great and it has it's witty moments but it didn't really do it for me.

Which, considering the great cast, was a shame. Kline stole most of the scenes he was in and was the best part of the film for me, Tucci was an enjoyable Puck, but with many others I found it difficult to find the characters behind the famous faces. Pfeiffer and Everett were both good but I didn't get much from Flockhart, Friel, Bale or West. The cast is deep in faces but this distracted me even more and served to remind me of how much window dressing this film seemed to have when all I really wanted was good story telling.

Overall I didn't enjoy this film simply because I found it hard to get into. I fully intend to watch it again in the future as I feel it may have been partially my fault, but I must say that I did expect a little help from the film. If you look at some recent adaptations of Shakespeare for the cinema you'll see that many have their own touches (visual, not dialogue) and that many of these help to deepen the characters and add understanding for the audience. This film had none of that – the fact that it was a film was used to make it look good and bring in a strong famous cast, it should have used the media to also make the story more accessible and fun to watch.

I admit, that I have not read the play, so probably all of the credit for the idea goes to Shakespeare himself. But I was also caught by the magic of the pictures. The actors and actresses were so pretty, the story so nicely recited, and the atmosphere somehow magically ravishing. I got a lot of positive feelings out of this movie, and when I walk through the forest now, I am reminded of them. Well, this film did leave a wonderful trace in my mind. Hopefully, it lasts for a couple of days. I give it an 8/10.

There have been many adaptations of Shakespeare plays over the last decade or so, most of them aimed squarely at younger viewers. You know the drill: The director picks out rocking, hip tunes to spice up the soundtrack and some hot, young stars to broadly interpret the Bard's work.

That's not the case here. Kevin Kline gets to ham it up as Nick Bottom, the base mechanical with delusions of thespian grandeur, and Michelle Pfeiffer gets to show off her own acting chops as Titania, the Queen of the fairies. Okay, so maybe a little knowledge of the play itself would help the average viewer, but if you're not a fan of the play, you can still witness some absolutely sumptuous camerawork and some funny, funny scenes - many of them dealing with the spellbound Bottom, who's been turned into a jackass. Stanley Tucci underplays (somewhat surprisingly) his role as the mischievous Puck, and even Callista Flockhart turns in a solid performance as one of four human (non-fairy) lovers.