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Love's Labour's Lost (2000) I Get a Kick Out of You Love’s Labour’s Lost is an entertaining mash-up of a 1930’s era musical with one of Shakespeare’s slighter comedies. The combination is less seamless than one might have wished, but Kenneth Branagh and his photogenic cast coast on creamy charm. This flighty flick has all the nutritional value of a flute of champagne, but who says Shakespeare has to be good for you? After Branagh’s epic, unabridged Hamlet—a four course meal if ever there was one—no one can blame him for whipping up this frothy dessert. The fact that Love’s Labour’s Lost is relatively unknown Shakespeare gives Branagh license to play fast and loose with his source material. Considering how abridged the text is—roughly thirty percent survived Branagh’s pruning—not much of a story remains to summarize. Basically, the King of Navarre (Alessandro Nivola) and his three best buds (Matthew Lillard, Branagh, and Adrian Lester) take an oath to renounce wine, women, and song for a three year tenure of intensive study. That plan hits a snag when the princess of France (Alicia Silverstone) makes a diplomatic visit attended by three lovely ladies-in-waiting (Emily Mortimer, Natascha McElhone, and Carmen Ejogo). Four guys plus four gals makes the math pretty calculable, and before long the cast has paired off accordingly. Love’s Labour’s Lost doesn’t labor under the false pretense that it is anything more than it is – an old fashioned paean to old-fashioned movie musicals. Branagh sets the film in a Technicolor dreamscape that deliberately echoes the great musicals of yesteryear. The soundtrack features such hummable hits as “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Cheek to Cheek,” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” by a veritable roll call of classic composers: Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter. The movie itself is a wholehearted embrace of old-school glamour: dapper tuxedoes, filtered cigarettes, chic hairdos, Busby-Berkeley water theatrics, and some burlesque-inspired broad comedy are all welcome throwbacks to a more stylish era. A movie this bubbly and good-natured would be tough for even the most hardened cynic to resist. So call me a cynic, but for all its breezy charm Love’s Labour’s Lost never quite hits the high notes of Branagh’s first cinematic foray into Shakespeare comedy, Much Ado About Nothing (1993). Gussying up one of the Bard’s less-produced plays as a retro musical was a nifty idea, but the movie never quite lives up to the promise of its cutesy conceit. Part of the problem is that the cast’s singing and dancing skills are not exactly up to snuff. The shaggy-dog amateurishness of the dance numbers adds to the movie’s “let’s put on a show!” charm, but any comparisons to Ginger Rogers or Fred Astaire would be downright insulting. For this reason, the musical numbers never take flight (even when the four fellows literally float up to the dome of their study in a rather literal interpretation of Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek” lyrics) and the sequences stay earthbound when they should take wing. The choreography is modest enough to not embarrass the untrained actors’ equally modest abilities, and the occasionally off-key renderings of Broadway standards also have an oddly appealing quality. Nonetheless, this is a musical, after all, and the slipshod singing and dancing give the impression that Branagh slapped the production together in a manic fit of inspiration and didn’t have the time or the resources to smooth out the rough patches. Lucky for him he’s got some pinch hitters. Nathan Lane is always good for yucks, and he delivers the goods as Costard, a sort of vaudevillian court jester. Timothy Spall also turns in a gut-busting performance as the verbose Don Armado, chewing right through the scenery. His “I Get a Kick Out of You” number, punctuated with him punting the moon, is a real treat and one of the movie’s highlight. But then there’s Alicia Silverstone, who ranks alongside Keanu Reeves in Much Ado as another example of Branagh’s apparent tendency to smoke crack during casting sessions. What was he thinking? Alicia Silverstone’s Valley Girl princess has a winning smile, but can’t manage to contort her lips, which seem to have a mind of their own, around the four-hundred year old language. I kept waiting for her to preface the iambic pentameter with, “So, like, totally…” Better equipped in the acting department is Natascha McElhone, a ravishing beauty who Branagh wisely cast as his love interest. Branagh was also wise to employ at least one actor with some song-and-dance credibility. Adrian Lester (whose Hamlet remains to this day the best I’ve seen), is the only cast member with the training to pull off a Fred-Astaire worthy show-stopper of a dance number. The splits he performs on a wooden table elicited oohs-and-ahhs from the appreciative audience. Apart from that impressive solo bit, Lester is criminally underused. I mean, come on – he sings, he dances, and he played Hamlet as if he were born for the part. Is there anything this guy can’t do? Then again, most of the cast (including Branag) is underused. At an anorexic 90 minutes, Love’s Labour’s Lost certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome, nor does it take the time to develop a real story and compelling characters. The cast is game, but the parts they play are interchangeable. Compare the anemic dialogue between the King of Navarre and the princess of France to the witty bouts between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado and you’ll get an idea of why Branagh needed to bolster the thin plot with some surefire song-and-dance sequences. It’s a neat gimmick that sustains the movie even if the execution is not wholly successful. Although the generally carefree flick ends on a somewhat jarring note of solemnity, Branagh enthusiasts will get a kick out of the singing, dancing, and Bard-penned bantering. Love’s Labour’s Lost is so light, it practically vanishes. Yet even if you can’t remember exactly what transpired as the credits roll, you’ll probably have a couple of catchy showtunes swimming in your head and a warm sense of soft-focus nostalgia for bygone days. There are worse ways to spend an evening. |
