Much Ado about Nothing (1993) review

 Number 858 on the top 1000 films of all time is Kenneth Branagh's 1993 adaptation of William Shakespeare's play 'Much Ado about Nothing.'

Don Pedro (Denzel Washington) and his noblemen Benedick and (Kenneth Branagh) Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard) are visiting their friend Leonato (Richard Briers) in Messina Sicily, after having crushed a rebellion by Pedro's half-brother Don John (Keanu Reeves.) In Messina, Pedro acts as match-maker, deciding to match Benedick and Leonato's niece Beatrice (Emma Thompson) who both seemingly hate each other. He also decides to match Claudio with Leonato's daughter Hero (Kate Beckinsale.)

Much ado about nothing is the best way to describe this film. It was beyond tedious. Granted, I'm not a Shakespeare fan, so I'm no doubt ignorant of the play's cultural significance. Call me a philistine, but I don't think that Shakespeare translates well to the big screen. At least not in its current form.

With Hamlet, Branagh ripped the dialogue straight from the folios. No doubt he did something similar here, as the dialogue was so expository. And it just went on and on. It was so verbose it was like the characters were reciting the dictionary. Plus Branagh and Thompson monologuing endlessly bored me beyond belief. This might have been okay for the 1500's, but not in 2024. Not even in 1993 when this was released. I'm not saying that I need gunfights and explosions, but I need more drama than Benedick trying and failing to figure out how a deck chair works.

Plus, this dialogue made the film so slow. It crawls toward a conclusion that I couldn't have cared less about - probably because I didn't care about the characters. Maybe if I was seeing it on stage, it would be different. But as I didn't care about the characters, I wasn't at all engrossed in the conflict. I say conflict, but a will they/won't they between either an annoying couple or a soppy one hardly makes the biggest stakes int he world.

It didn't help that Keanu Reeves was positively awful as Don John. True, as the villain, he doesn't really do much. He does some scheming in the shadows, promptly disappears, only to be caught and smirk at the camera at the end of the film. But Reeves never looked comfortable with the Shakespearean dialogue. No wonder he got a Razzie nomination.

I'm sure there are some Harold Bloom types out there ready to denounce me as a philistine, but this film was really much ado about nothing.