Love's Labour's Lost is a movie that rests entirely in the eyes of the beholder. Either it's very daffy and amusing, or else it's a stretch -- and that call is essentially up to the viewer.

Filmmaker Kenneth Branagh takes Shakepeare's frankly-idiotic-to-begin-with romantic comedy and livens it up as a high-camp, all-singing, all-dancing version set in the 1930s.

It's an approach that serves the original play very well.

Alessandro Nivola plays the King of Navarre, a ruler who convinces his three best friends (played by Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Lillard and Adrian Lester) to remove themselves from the outside world for three years to study philosophy. Three years of hard work, fasting, little sleep and no woman visitors. Uh-oh.

A visit from the Princess of France (Alicia Silverstone) throws quite a spanner into the works of their resolve, especially as she brings with her three fetching handmaidens, played by Emily Mortimer, Natasha McElhone and Carmen Ejogo.

Once the quartet of well-matched noble people have sung and danced together (Gershwins! Cole Porter! Irving Berlin!) and discovered their mutual attraction, love conquers all. Among those on the sidelines singing and dancing are Nathan Lane, Timothy Spall and Geraldine McEwan.

Not everybody "gets" this latest foray into Bard turf by Branagh, who has also made film versions of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet.

Test screenings a year ago revealed that some audience members felt they needed permission to laugh at Shakespeare; Branagh provided that by linking song and dance scenes with wacky '30s black-and-white newsreels.

Still, when the male leads first bust out singing and tapping, there is a moment of disbelief -- and discomfort -- among viewers. The production is so unselfconscious and giddy that it takes getting used to. It's damn weird and, weirder still, it begins to grow on you.

Love's Labour's Lost is so immediately pretty to look at, so beruffled and embroidered with intricate sets and costumes, and everything so stylized and Busby Berkeley, that it is difficult not to see the film initially as a really wonderful high-school musical production. The energized deliveries of Shakespeare's words, however, quickly erase that first impression.

Based on Shakepeare's own sitcom-ish plot twists and devices, and ludicrous romantic pining scenes, Branagh's take on Love's Labour's Lost is certainly entertaining. No doubt it will offend some Shakespeare purists. Hard cheese.

(This film is rated PG)

More Movie Reviews