Directed by Joss Whedon

Starring Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg

Grade: B

How do you make a movie version of a Shakespeare play accessible to a mainstream audience? It’s a tough nut to crack. Most directors either make them giant dazzling spectacles, ala Romeo and Juliet, or they just accept that they have a very narrow, nuanced audience, ala Kenneth Branagh. The latter is probably the better idea because, let’s face it, the big commercial audiences just aren’t going to spend their days off sitting through Shakespeare. Don’t scoff at that, it’s just simply a reality, and it doesn’t really mean people are stupid either. Shakespeare, language-wise, is a little dated now, and not for everyone. Joss Whedon takes a different tactic in his Much Ado About Nothing. He strips it down, sets it in a very modern location (his own house and backyard), moves it at a brisk pace, and makes sure there are plenty of sight gags to keep the laughs coming when the language becomes too tough to sift through. The result is a bit uneven at times, but very enjoyable. I can’t say this movie succeeds in being the giant crossover-Shakespeare-mainstream hit, but I can’t say that it really aims to be either.

The plot, for those of you who don’t know it, is both as simple and convoluted as every damn Shakespeare play. Two couples, who have opposite views of romance and who the audience instantly recognizes that these people should be together even when they maybe do not, go through a courtship and marriage. Devious plots that come off as incredibly far-fetched in a modern setting, threaten to break the spirit of romance, but ultimately love conquers and all that.

Whedon casts his usual gallery of rogues in this adaptation. The two most recognizable names to non-Whedonites will be Nathan Fillion and Clark Gregg and neither of them disappoint. Fillion gets the biggest laughs of the movie easily as Dogberry, and Gregg brings the same charm to Leonato as he did to Agent Coulson from The Avengers. The two characters who get the most screen time are Beatrice (Amy Acker) and Benedick (Alexis Denisof), who are the pair that shuns romance and love and marriage while not realizing they actually love each other. They are both good in their roles but the main appeal will be for Whedon fans to finally see Wesley and Fred get their happy ending they were denied on Angel.

Overall, this movie is fun but is probably limited in its scope due to the fact that it’s a bare-budget rendition of a Shakespeare play filmed in a dude’s house. It’s clearly something that some friends did for fun rather than any commercial, or even artistic, related reasoning. It’s the kind of thing many of my friends would probably love to do but lack the multi-million dollar mansion and private funding to accomplish. In fact, probably the biggest thing to take away from this film is that Joss Whedon has a really, really nice house.

So this is not the movie that makes Shakespeare accessible to everyone, and was probably really just released with the knowledge that Mr. Whedon has such a built-in audience that it’s absolutely guaranteed to make some money. If you’re a Shakespeare fan, or a Whedon fan, see it. If you’re neither of those things, you can probably skip it.