Love's Labour's Lost (2000)

Certainly not the best adaptation of Shakespeare of Kenneth Branagh's directing career that's for sure.  It's a brave decision to take a Shakespeare play and turn it into a '30s musical using Gershwin songs.  Sometimes it works but mostly it just feels out of place.  Yet there is a joyful quality to this film that makes it impossible to hate it.  Even if some of the actors need to take a few more lessons on how to perform Shakespeare, their gun ho spirit is visible.  The biggest problem for me was that it felt truncated.  I understand that a modern audience won't sit through a four hour play but too much of it was cut.  I wanted more Shakespeare and less news reel footage that tells us information instead of showing us.  I would recommend if you watch this film you check out the DVD extras.  The deleted scenes are wonderful and proof that they had the material.   I'm hoping Kenneth Branagh continues directing the Barb, even if the result its like this.  Shakespeare deserves it all.  Grade: B