Cymbeline

This film is a modern plus classical hybrid of the Shakespearean play, Cymbeline.

After watching just a few minutes, I already wished I didn't choose this film. It's an interesting idea to put new modern scenes onto Shakespearean dialogue, but it doesn't work at all. Shakespeare fans will be appalled by the millions of anachronisms in the film, while everyone else will be put off by the archaic dialogue. A similar endeavour, "Titus" starring Anthony Hopkins already demonstrated that this hybrid doesn't work, so it's quite unfortunate that the filmmakers attempt it again. I really wonder why so many famous actors agreed to star in it. One more thing, I like Dakota Johnson in "Fifty Shades of Grey", but in this film her forehead is so overly botoxed that she could not even muster a single wrinkle even when faced with much distress. Even Milla Jovovich managed some!

I watched " Cymbeline" until the end, and trust me it did not get any better. If you don't like the first scene, then switch it off right away.

"I live in fear, though this Heavenly angel, Hell is here." Cymbeline (Harris) is the leader of a biker gang and the ruler of his family. His daughter Imogen (Johnson) is sought after and is loved by her family. When rivals attempt to seduce and steal Imogen away from her family and the one she loves things take a tragic turn. This leads Cymbeline on a quest for revenge. Going in I didn't realize this was a Shakespeare play. When I found that out I was nervous. I am not a big fan at all. I did like the Romeo & Juliet with DiCaprio and Coriolanus with Ralph Fiennes but other than that I have not really enjoyed the recent adaptations. This falls under that category. It could be because I'm not a fan and the whole movie is done in the old English but I found it very confusing to determine what was going on. Fans of Shakespeare will most likely not have this problem but as for me I was just too confused and uninterested to really pay attention to and get involved with. Overall, Shakespeare fans will get into this, I just could not. I give it a C+.

Michael Almereyda once again stuffs a Shakespearean play into modern day society and comes up with an incomprehensible mess. His film of "Hamlet" at least used as its framework an enduring masterpiece with themes as relevant to today's world as when it was written. But "Cymbeline" is an obscure, rarely produced oddity from Shakespeare's canon which employs unlikely plotting centered on obsolete sexual morality which has no relevance to today's world. Why Almereyda thought this archaic chestnut needed to be set in the present day is baffling.

It is up to the actors to inject some life into this dull mess and for the most part, they are not up to the task. Dakota Johnson is stunning to look at as the ill-used Imogen, but gives a one-note performance that is insufferable to watch. Ethan Hawke brings to the evil Iachimo the same dull monotone that he employed as Almereyda's Hamlet. And Penn Badgley makes the gullible Posthumus seem like a refugee from a boy band. Only Delroy Lindo and Ed Harris project the charisma necessary to make their characters interesting, although demoting Harris' Cymbeline from the King of Britain in the original text to the head of a motorcycle gang is unimaginably reductive.

Almereyda seems to have a fetish for updating Shakespearean drama into the modern world and has no issue with pummeling it into a different shape to fit his concept no matter what the Bard's original intention was while writing it. The approach worked intermittently with "Hamlet" but fails completely with "Cymbeline." Almereyda would be well advised to seek out contemporary stories to make films of and leave Shakespeare alone.

At least that's what the German distributor would like you to believe that is. What it is though, is a Shakespeare piece thrown into the modern world, but with the same dialogue you'll find in his books. So some words may seem inappropriate considering the time it plays, but that's up to the viewer to decide if he or she will fall for that.

The actors are decent actually and they know their Shakespeare. But that might not help the viewer actually enjoying this. It does seem amateurish at times too. And again not the actors fault. Having said that, I'm not sure "real" dialogue would have changed my perspective on the movie overall. The drama is there (it was in the book), but the delivery script and shooting wise lacks a lot ...

Playing Shakespeare with various NY accents is like playing Moliere with "Allo Allo" accents. It's just crap. The original Shakespeare, performed at the Globe in London, is a lot like Irish English. It is nothing like the squawky dialects of the colonies. Words like "Thou took'st a beggar; wouldst have made my throne a seat for baseness" sound credible in either the original Early Modern English or in standard Oxford English but in Bronxese, Jerseyese, or Manhattenese they sound simply like ludicrous crap.

If that weren't enough the whole production with its pretentious, foreboding, ponderous atmosphere utterly lacks continuity and energy. It's just a sequence of meaningless lines uttered in incongruous settings by talented people whose desperate attempts to breathe life into this corpse of a movie are more cringeworthy than praiseworthy. Talent ceases to be talent when expended so pointlessly.