As You Like It Reviews

• A Review? Simple. It's Beautiful!!

  
  By ATQ9YE10WQOJ0 on 2007-08-22
  This movie is beautiful! That's right. That's my whole review.
  There are stylised Komonos and rich 1890-ish Western costumes. A pallette of amazing reds, maroons and rose colors set against a magical green forest with ancient towering trees and exotic oriental marshes.
  The romantic comedy element is all about being in love; being giddy with all consuming love. The Shakespearean words are edited short and crisp and are delivered naturalistically and effortlessly by the likes of Kevin Kline and Brian Blessed. Of the leads, David Oyelowo stands out as a very masculine and handsome leading man and Bryce Dallas Howard (an American) more that holds her own with the mostly British cast.
  Perhaps due to Branagh's pruning of the text, I also found listening to, and understanding As You Like It just as effortless as the actor's delivery. I'm not an English teacher nor an Elizabethean scholar and this movie spoke to me, taking me on a wonderful escape. (NOTE: Make sure to watch all the way through the credits!)
  It is obvious that Kenneth Branagh puts his whole soul into his movies. Thank you Kenneth!
  
  

• 'All the world's a stage'

  
  By A328S9RN3U5M68 on 2007-08-22
  Kenneth Branagh, aside from being a gifted actor with an enormous range of creative character abilities, has once again brought Shakespeare to life on the screen. His previous excursions into the bard's repertoire have included 'Much Ado About Nothing', 'Henry V', 'Love's Labour's Lost', 'Hamlet', and 'Othello', and now he adds one of the bard's most successful comedies AS YOU LIKE IT to his list of successes. Branagh has the gift of making the visual aspects of Shakespeare's stories enhance the language and in doing so he makes Shakespeare sound like brilliant conversation (which it of course is) instead of stilted and brittle old English.
  
  The 'gimmick' used here by Branagh in adapting Shakespeare's play is placing the action in 19th century Japan, and while other less sensitive directors might have opted to insert parody here, Branagh instead makes the story seem all the more plausible - the two feuding brothers (one dark and one light) whose struggle over their estate opens the play before credits with an ingenious silent drama of black leather feudal costumed men invading a genteel house party of lovely people enjoying a Japanese dancer's performance. The original brother is banished with his clan to the Arden forest and there the magic begins. Love between several couples is played in all its manifestations with disguise, misconceptions, lust, and poetry until the play's rollicking end in a song of Hey Nonny Nonny!
  
  The lovers include the disguised Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Orlando (David Oyelowo), Celia (Romola Garai) and Oliver (Adrian Lester), the court fool Touchstone (a brilliant Alfred Molina) and Audrey (Janet McTeer), and Sylvius (Alex Wyndham) and Phoebe (Jade Jefferies). Brian Blessed plays the roles of both feuding brothers with style and authority, and Kevin Kline offers a fully realized Jaques - the character who is given the most memorable soliloquies in the play. The settings and imagery (Tim Harvey) are artistic and beautiful and captured with style by cinematographer Roger Lanser, and as with all of Branagh's production the music score (here by Patrick Doyle) is letter perfect and atmospheric.
  
  But in the end the kudos go to Kenneth Branagh for his consistent courage and conviction that Shakespeare's plays are timeless, and his devotion to bringing them to the contemporary audience is to be applauded. This is a fine film - one to own! Grady Harp, August 07
  
  

• Sometimes the Forest of Arden ought to be just the Forest of Arden!

  
  By A2BDZAU0Y4J6NB on 2007-11-08
  "As You Like It" is one of my favorite plays. Grounded in the tradition of Greco-Roman pastoral, the play asks the following question, via Jaques: If man, who is trying to escape the intrigues of court, escapes to the green cabinet of nature, will he not consequently bring the intrigues of court with him, and therefore ruin nature? Shakespeare answers this question, which seems very timely in our warming world of globalization, in the affirmative.
  
  This film, which is peerlessly acted, gains nothing by its Japanese setting, which, admittedly scrumptious to behold, is merely distracting. I fully expected a mincing Gilbert & Sullivan chorus to break into "If you want to know who we are, we are gentlemen of Japan, on every vase and jar, on every screen and fan." I have no objection to updating, nor to removing the setting to another location--or as Shakespeare would say, to another part of the forest. Such a removal was successful in Trevor Nunn's "Twelfth Night," which was set in a Cornish "Illyria." It was also done with delightful tongue-in-cheek in the 1960s' "Midsummer Night's Dream," which focused on a stately British home, labeled "Athens." Furthermore, I even suspended my disbelief when Brannagh set "Much Ado about Nothing" in Tuscany (partly because I love Italy). In none of these cases, did the change of setting disrupt the illusion. By placing "As You Like It"--most of which takes place in the fantastical "Forest of Arden" (to which the characters refer repeatedly)--in the historical context of a violent nineteenth-century Japan, Brannagh disrupts the magic as irrevocably as if he had placed the first scenes in the 1930s' Leni Riefenstall-inspired glamor of the Third Reich and then had everyone escape to the Forest of Bavaria, still calling it the Forest of Arden.
  
  Because Brannagh has already burst the bubble of Shakespeare's magic, his final metatheatrical conceit, of having Rosalind deliver the epilogue (full of gender-bending innuendo, since the part was originally played by a boy playing a girl playing a boy) among the actors dressing-room caravans, falls flat. I also think that Brannagh's moving scenes around, his making cuts (Touchstone, one of Shakespeare's greatest clowns, got lost somewhere in the forest), spoiled the rhythm of the play which takes on an incantatory magic in the "And I for Phebe, And I for Ganymeade, And I for Rosalind, And I for no woman" scene between the pastoral Silvius and Phebe, and the lovers Orlando and Ganymede/Rosalind.
  
  I am also cross with Kenneth Brannagh for recycling the ending which was delightful and far more effective in "Much Ado" ("Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more!"), complete with the actors dancing in circles--all viewed from above among cascading rose-petals (Perhaps they were cherry blossoms this time.).
  
  On the plus side, English subtitles were available, and, as I said, the acting is excellent and Rosalind is more than lovely to look at, as are the costumes.
  
  Although I am generally a great fan of Kenneth Brannagh, I do wish he had left the Forest of Arden in its magical land of nowhere.
  
  

• Kenneth Branagh is on an ego trip

  
  By A1UJYDF4HXW5FH on 2007-08-23
  Kenneth Branagh's Shakespearean productions have always been perilously chaotic and extravagant, but in this one he's finally gone off the deep end, a hodgepodge of politically correct casting (black hero, white heroine) set in Nineteenth Century Japan, which doesn't even make a stab at historical authenticity. The Bard's beautiful language takes a backseat to a trendy concern for oriental exotica that would gag a maggot. Branagh's delirious intoxication with multiculturalism is pure self-indulgence. In the first ten minutes of the movie, there's a Kabuki play, a Ninja-style attack, a kung fu bout and a sumo wrestling match. Has Branagh gone completely nuts? This isn't homage to Shakespeare, it's a desecration. The worst thing about Branagh's contempt for historical verisimilitude is that it makes a mockery of Shakespeare's painstaking calibration of character to time and place. The liberal critics at the NY Times will go gaga over this one!
  
  

• "All the world's a stage..." and we're stuck in this lousy movie

  
  By A3ADA1X8T5V9NE on 2007-10-10
  When will Kenneth Branagh learn? And when will the audiences who embrace his ridiculous visions of Shakespearean classics learn as well? His MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING was a rip-off of Judi Dench's production from the mid-1980's. His HAMLET was an abomination (he ignored the text in favor of his own creative license - I particularly love his setting the scene with the Ghost of Hamlet's Father in a swamp instead of on the battlements, as the text specifies, despite numerous references in the script to the danger of the Ghost's luring Hamlet to his rocky death below!)
  
  Granted, AS YOU LIKE IT is one of Shakespeare's weakest comedies - randomly plotted with no real dramatic action per se, more of an assortment of interesting characters than an actual story. A wrestling match and a banishment give way to random couples frolicing in the nearby wood without purpose (unlike A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.) But by setting the action in feudal Japan, Branagh seems to be searching for an explanation of the wrestling scene in the first act of the play, rather than making a specific statement about the play's action transposed to that particular place and time. Ultimately the setting is pretty, but little else.
  
  We are thus left with a number of performances ranging from whimsical (Alfred Molina as the clown Touchstone) to mildly enchanting (Bryce Dallas Howard and David Oyelowo trying to eek out some sort of romantic chemistry) to "What play are they in exactly?" (Janet McTeer in a dumbed-down, slapstick turn as Audrey.) And Kline's performance as the melancholy Jacques is well-recited, if not particulaly well-acted.
  
  Viewers unfamiliar with the play may not realize that Shakespeare's character list is hodge-podge of types, ethnicities and heritages, so it's understandable that Branagh chose an interracial cast for this text. This conceit is far more successful here than in his mixed-up version of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, where the miscasting is painful and greatly harms the film's success. However, wonderful British actors like Brian Blessed and Richard Briers are given nothing to do and only serve to fill-out the otherwise young and good-looking cast.
  
  Branagh's ideas can be mildly interesting, but too often they are unsupported by the actual text he is interpreting. Why set HAMLET in a quasi-Russia pre-Revolution? Why transform LOVE'S LABOURS LOST into a musical? Why set AS YOU LIKE IT in 19th Japan following its "opening to the West?" These questions aren't really answered in any of his films, and in AS YOU LIKE IT in particular. The weaknesses of the film, however, are not entirely Branagh's by design - Shakespeare's play is itself quaint, mildly charming and totally inconsequential in comparison to most of his other comedies. Does Branagh elect to concentrate on the Bard's stronger works? More often than not, no - he polishes what he considers to be a forgotten gem without realizing that it's only a rhinestone.
  
  And, when in doubt, he his last resort is having the lovers dash around arm in arm, laughing gaily and skipping to and fro, under the ridiculous conceit that this passes as entertaining. Newsflash - it didn't work in MUCH ADO, it certainly didn't work in LOVE'S LABOURS LOST, and it doesn't do any credit to AS YOU LIKE IT, either.
  
  
  
• As I Kind of Like It
  By A30TK6U7DNS82R on 2007-09-29
  It's like watching the cast of FIREFLY do Shakespeare and they're wearing their same costumes, that curious blend of Old West leather and buckskin and vaguely Asian silks, kimonoes, sashes. Branagh must have been inspired by Joss Whedon's version of the future as a mixed bag of racial and gender identities bumping up againat each other like pinballs in a magic machine, for he tries to recreate old Japan (hello, PACIFIC OVERTURES) and makes it playful, dangerous, enchanted fun, a land out of the course of current events, a land in which a black family of brothers could emerge as noblemen intermarrying into the daughters of the white, landed gentry without an eyebrow raised, even though it's the 1820s or 30s or 40s and in many parts of the world slave trade was not yet abolished.
  
  Is the experiment a success? Maybe not, but Branagh brings an immense amount of vitality and bright autumn colors to his screen picture. You might almost believe it could happen, and such is the vivacity of his young leading lady, Bryce Dallas Howard, that even though she is technically ill-suited to play Shakespeare, she's well up to playing the Joss Whedon version given here. Her drag act is one double take after another, lowering and raising her voice along a tiny range, the same cute vocal inflections again and again--like Buffy's--but persuasive, too; she makes you believe she's having the grandest time in the world.
  
  Why cast the Duke and his brother with the same actor (Brian Blessed, just about the most overblown ham since Lorne Greene in BONANZA)? It doesn't make a lot of sense, and to have one of them in white beard, another black, brings to mind the difference between Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White in LORD OF THE RINGS. If little Frodo and Samwise had come trailing after the pair I wouldn't have blinked an eye. For Branagh, it's all about the color scheme (I guess), which gives his AS YOU LIKE IT a strange visual unity, reds, yellows, the umber color of falling leaves.
  
  I kept watching and watching and at the end, I turned to my cat and asked her, "Did you get *why* Rosalind had to dress up as a young man?" Or rather, why once it proved inconvenient for her to continue doing so, why didn't she just stop, reveal herself to Orlando? I've seen this play a dozen times before and never before have I had to ask a cat that question. Please comment and answer me, as Sylvia refused to say one way or another.
  
  
• Just happy it's finally on film...
  By A30REFMQHNQU7L on 2007-10-27
  Incredibly, this seems to be the first version of Shakespeare's masterpiece of comic wit, As You Like It, in 70 years - since Laurence Olivier's disappointingly dry and frilly 1937 production! If for no other reason, true fans of the Bard will be grateful to Kenneth Branagh for this latest effort, although many of his decisions as director left me scratching my head.
  
  As for mixing the Forest of Arden with the world of Shogun, I was basically neutral. Let Branagh have his artistic license with that one, although I admit it did make the scene where Orlando is attacked by a lion somewhat surreal. (Which may be why it happens off stage in the play.) And sure, the cinematography and landscape are stunning, but what really disappointed me was the way Branagh and the cast chose to play the key roles. As You Like It contains three of Shakespeare's most brilliant major characters: Touchstone the Fool, Jaques the melancholy cynic, and the incomparable Rosalind.
  
  Touchstone trails in brilliance only behind Feste from Twelfth Night, and Lear's Fool from that great tragedy, but sadly, many of his best lines are either cut out of this version, or delivered by Alfred Molina in such a way that he just seems morose. He partially rescues the role with his facial expressions and physical slapstick, but Touchstone can be much more than the rude court goof that he is here. Kevin Kline does fairly well with Jaques, but inexplicably, one of the greatest minor speeches in all Shakespeare ("All the world's a stage...") is delivered in a distant, wide-angle shot with virtually no emotion, so you can't even tell Kline is speaking the lines until the very last words. It seems like they're being read off camera. Last but not least, Rosalind. If you agree with Harold Bloom, Rosalind is one of Shakespeare's three most brilliant minds, in the upper pantheon with Hamlet and Falstaff. She can spar with anyone, and bends the entire cast of As You Like It to her will. While Bryce Dallas Howard admittedly has a big job to do, she just keeps failing to nail the part. Unquestionably lovely and captivating in some scenes, she never quite reaches that saucy, fiery spark that puts Rosalind so far beyond other Shakespearean heroines. It doesn't help that Branagh barely attempts to maintain the cross-dressing fiction of the plot, having Howard play the role with her hair down for half of the movie, and even bathing nude in a stream in one (invented) scene. As a viewer I had no complaints, but you have to go to great lengths to suspend disbelief enough to imagine that Orlando still thinks Ganymede is a boy.
  
  All in all, a charming production and long, long overdue. Three stars just for bringing it to the screen, and another for trying to be creative, but in all his zeal to experiment with the setting, the dialogue, the casting, and the production of this film, Branagh seems to have forgotten that you really better be careful if you're going to try to be more clever than the Bard.
  
  
  
• Not as I like it
  By A6CUPIF676W67 on 2007-10-08
  Sadly, I can't agree with the glowing reviews here. This isn't a movie, it's a series of vaguely related and largely incoherent scenes--David Lynch on a bad day after seeing The Mikado. Kevin Kline shamelessly recycles his "Bottom" from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Brian Blessed is alternatively melancholy for no reason (as the bad duke) and pompous to no purpose (as the good duke). I've read the play many times, and only that allowed me to figure out what was going on--nobody else with whom I saw the movie could tell who was who or what was happening. Even the much-praised cinematography left me cold--this is Shakespeare, not National Geographic. If Ken B. would recognize that he is a very skilled actor and stager of Shakespeare, and stop trying to remake Shakespeare into Fellini, he might again produce the powerfully minimalist work (e.g. Henry V and Much Ado) that made him famous. Until such time, don't buy, rent.
  
  
• I loved it !
  By AVECJ57D1148Y on 2007-09-06
  Imaginatively directed, superbly cast, beautifully acted and wonderfully orchestrated production, with Kevin Kline's presentation of the seven ages of man quite the best I have ever seen, including Stratford and Montgomery!
  
  
• 5 minutes of commercials
  By A30ISS8B6QZ7FP on 2007-11-03
  I really liked the play, it was very well done and worth watching. What I hate is the 5 minutes of commercials at the beginning of the DVD that you can't skip or fast forward through. This is just BS. A pox upon the people that do this. I will never purchase another HBO DVD.
  
  
• don't like it much
  By A344QJX0YZQ04V on 2007-09-30
  18th century english garb, japanese influence, racial overtones, superficial zen...too many unnecessary distractions to mention. why guild the lilly, kenneth? this is one of the master's most enjoyable comedies. the language is profound by itself however, when set in elizabethan times, "as you like it" becomes a riot of inuendo and irony. when is some brave/ingenious visionary going to recreate the original and use an all male cast? that's where layers of humour can be mined to any depth a deft director might desire. alas, i'm still waiting...
  
  
• Beautiful but not brilliant
  By A1MOY1S7KD09U2 on 2007-10-19
  'Beautiful' seems to be the word of praise most used for this movie, and visually gorgeous it certainly is. It is probably worth watching for that alone. But this comedy, usually hailed as the most witty and sparkling of Shakespeare's comedies, turns into a sort of fest of overblown emotions without the wit to leaven them. It's not helped by its leading lady, Bryce Dallas Howard, who is a gorgeous and well-spoken Rosalind without a lot of range or irony. Only in the epilogue does she really show much spark. Simply speaking, you wish that the characters were taking themselves a little less seriously.
  
  Branagh is, as always, a superb director, but it's the adaptation that's lacking slightly here. The much-debated Japanese setting is not terribly illuminating in any way, unlike his Hamlet transposition which skilfully used the 1848 pan-European setting to provoke reflection on the political and philosophical volatility of the time period and of the text -- a true feat. Here, a few title cards are thrown up with some vague historical background which is then forgotten; the film could just as well have taken place in a quasi-Japanese fairytale world (the equivalent of, oh, let's see, the English Forest of Arden!) without any feeble explanation. It's just pretty.
  
  Romola Garai is a hilarious Celia, so much so that I found myself wishing she had played Rosalind. The other standout was Adrian Lester, who managed to convey a believably villainous but then instantly sympathetic Oliver. Branagh fans were hoping wildly for him to play Jaques or Touchstone; you'll be wishing that afterwards, too, as Kevin Kline was a good but rather monochromatic Jaques (if Branagh had cut the monologue before 'All the world's a stage,' it might have helped), and Molina's Touchstone was not often funny. (Really, that's what I keep coming back to--I ought to have been laughing my head off, and barely ever cracked a smile.)
  
  The DVD is set at low volume, so be prepared to jack it up. Sadly, no director commentary, as I would have loved to hear Branagh talk about his creative shot choices and movement in detail. Instead, there's a crap 5-minute featurette that tells you nothing much about his creative process, but at least provides some behind-the-scenes shot of the genius at work to keep his fans satisfied.
  
  The bottom line: a must-see, of course, for Shakespeare and Branagh fans, who will enjoy critiquing it and/or adoring it. Will probably do well for period-film-lovers based on its visual beauty.
  
  
• Another near miss
  By A3G8OG9MKN85MQ on 2007-10-06
  I am a huge fan of Branagh's previous works (HENRY V, MUCH ADO..., and HAMLET in particular. No point in even mentioning LLL), and was anxious to see his latest foray into Shakespeare on film.
  
  Sadly, I was much disappointed. Shakespeare's playscript has been eviscerated to the point that the story makes almost no sense, and Rosalind's part (among others) has been whittled down from witty poetry to mere whining. Which is okay, I guess, because Bryce Dallas Howard is a dreadful Shakespearean, and looks/sounds like she's struggling through a bad high school production with insufficient rehearsal. Kevin Kline plays Jaques as if he's merely constipated. The only redeeming aspects are some of the secondary players (Brian Blessed, Richard Briers, Adrian Lester and, surprisingly, Alfred Molina).
  
  The best parts of the film are the scenery in the forest and, of course, Patrick Doyle's score. His setting of "A Lover and His Lass" is terrific, and the Violin Romance used throughout is lush and romantic.
  
  The Japanese setting could have worked to advantage, but with no script and some really pathetic acting, the film stays lost in the undergrowth of the forest of Arden for two hours. What a shame.
  
  
• Pure joy
  By ATT8SWJDK1UKG on 2008-07-22
  This is my first review at Amazon.com despite being a customer for countless years, but I felt compelled to add my praise to what is undoubtedly a very polarizing version of "As You Like It". Like other reviewers, this is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, for reasons that were not clear even to me until today. And like others, I was initially taken aback by the Japanese setting and conglomeration of styles and cast (I watched this on an airplane and initially thought I had chosen the wrong movie!). But as it went on, I fell in love with the diversity and power of the production. I had just come back from one of the most difficult trips and days of my life, and the theme that shone through most clearly to me in the movie--finding joy even in adversity--was just what I needed. The thought that this modern production of words penned by someone dead for 400 years uplifted me in a way I can hardly describe. It showed that some things--love, poetry, kindness, humor--can transcend all time and space. By the end I felt held in a place of pure joy, which I think is what has always drawn me to the Forest of Arden. If you are a purist, I can't promise you will love this, but if you want to be truly enraptured by the passion and wit of Shakespeare's words I cannot recommend it more highly.
  
  
• Takes some getting-used-to, but enjoyable in the end.
  By A3JQ58CZBV3FOZ on 2008-07-26
  Usually, I prefer my opera or play set in traditional production, with the time frame, costumes and cast as plausible and realistic as possible. This movie is therefore a disappointment to me at the very beginning, with the background set to 19 century Japan and the de Boys brothers played by black actors. Director Kenneth Branagh's leisurely pacing does not help.
  
  Strangely, as the story goes on and the action moves away from the Japanese "court" to the forest, I find myself gradually swayed by the excellent performance of every actor in the movie and begin to truly enjoy some of the best dialogues from Shakespeare.
  
  Branagh really does a good job bringing the best out of his talented cast. It is obvious that they are all having a fun time. But the most attention getting has to be the two leading ladies. Bryce Dallas Howard's lips and Romola Garai's eyes are so lively and exuberant, one wonders how anyone can top their performance. Amazingly, the answer to that question is also right there on the screen. Kevin Kline's Jaques is subtle, true and touching at the same time. Just seeing him read "All the world's a stage..." is worth the price of the DVD already.
  
  
• Branagh Returns
  By A73QPH7NGI0DJ on 2007-10-09
  After Henry V (which is objectively the best movie ever made), Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet (two-disk DVD arrived in the same shipment as this), and Love's Labor Lost (haven't seen it), produced between 1989 and the present, Kenneth Branagh adapts the pastoral comedy As You Like It as a film. Sadly, this was never released in theatres outside of Italy (of course, the Bard isn't a huge draw at the box office), but it's now out on HBO DVD (and has a really annoying set of commercials appended to the start that you can't fast-forward or "menu" through).
  
  Anyway, when I first heard that Branagh was directing this, I was both thrilled and a bit disappointed, the latter owing to the decision to film one of the comedies rather than one of the tragedies or histories (I'd kill to see him film Macbeth; what's that, witches? You say that if I...). But, take what you can get. Anyway, this is set in 1880s Japan "for some reason" (as one review put it), and, truly, the setting doesn't add a whole lot. Apart from ninjas, which are always cool.
  
  For those who don't know the plot (which, there's a good chance you mightn't, this not being Hamlet): The good Duke Senior has been banished from his kingdom by his evil brother, Duke Frederick, and fled with some accompanying lords (most notably Jacques) into the forest of Arden (here pronounced "Ard-en" rather than "Ar-den"); however, the good Duke's daughter, Rosalind, is still in court, being kept their by the evil Frederick because his own daughter, Celia, refuses to live without her. In the play, the sense is that this has been the case for a while, but the film actually begins with the banishment, so the whole affair from start to finish seems to last for a couple of weeks. Anyway, Frederick eventually decides to banish Rosalind too, because everyone loves her and feels sorry for her; however, Celia runs off with her, and they take the court clown (Touchstone) with them for no particular reason. Also fleeing into the forest are Orlando and his servant Adam, to escape the wrath of Orlando's jerk older brother; Orlando is in love with Rosalind. Rosalind adopts the guise of a man named Ganymede (two maids shouldn't travel alone; although they then decide to bring an actual man with them, although he's a clown, so maybe he doesn't count), and Celia starts calling herself Aliena, and they settle down in a shepherd's cottage. There are about five different love stories preceding from this point. And eventually everyone lives happily ever after.
  
  In terms of actors, let's first account for the usual Branagh people (Shakespeare roles in brackets):
  
  - Richard Briers (Bardolph, Leonato, Polonius, Nathaniel) is Adam, Orlando's (and Orlando's father's) faithful servant. A rather small part for him, but he's got one great little scene early on.
  - Patrick Doyle (Soldier, Balthazar, better known as his composer, but whenever there's singing to be done, he's in) as Amiens. He actually has some dialogue other than singing.
  - Jimmy Yuill (Captain Jamy, Friar Francis, Alexander, Dull; perennial bit-player) as Corin the shepherd.
  - And last, but certainly not least, the man, the myth, the legend: Brian Blessed (Duke of Exeter, Antonio, King Hamlet's Ghost). Brian Blessed fans, this is your movie, because he plays not one, but two parts: both good Duke Senior and evil Duke Frederick (one wears white, the other wears black).
  
  Branagh himself is conspicuously absent here (he almost played the part of Touchstone or Jacques, but ultimately cast Alfred Molina and Kevin Kline in those parts; Molina is great as a very Chaplin-esque character; Kline has the famous "All the world's a stage" soliloquy). Despite this being set in Japan, there are only two Japanese actors worth noting, playing Sylvius and Phoebe (the pathetic shepherd and his cold mistress), but we also have two black actors as brothers Orlando and Oliver (at least we're not being sold Keanu and Denzel as siblings this time). Romola Garai is Celia, and she's also quite good (mostly she does physical comedy/mugging to all the craziness going on around her).
  
  And finally, there's Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind. She is, simply, great; she's the equal of Emma Thompson or Kate Winslet in Branagh's other Shakespeare films. She has what would seem to be the difficult role of pretending to be a man, but it's not actually hard at all, because the director's strategy seems to be to have everyone just act like she looks like a man, without making any attempt to actually make her seem one (her disguise really amounts to cutting her hair shorter, and occasionally wearing a hat). She's a delight the whole way through, and most of the actual humour really comes from the surreal way everyone acts like she's a man when really she's Bryce Dallas Howard with a haircut and (occasionally) a hat.
  
  Now, on to negatives; it really comes down to the fact that this is a rather slight play, and thus a rather slight film. There's nothing remotely approaching any of the dozens of profound moments in Henry V here (which, again: best film ever); it's mostly just fun performances and witty character interaction. All the same, if you enjoy Branagh and/or Shakespeare's comedies, I'd recommend giving it a look.
  
  And Kenneth? Seriously, Macbeth.
  
  
• East is West
  By A22018UCW49758 on 2008-03-16
  One may have little regard for As You Like It and still feel that chopping it to pieces and scattering the bits over the vernal salad of Arden is not a recipe for success. Cut two-thirds of the play as Branagh does and what remains? A string of sketchy vignettes without the time or the text to breathe, develop and resolve. At best the results can be likened to a volume of illustrations: easy, superficial, providing discrete visualizations of key moments, but aliterate and threadbare in itself.
  
  And yet. While this movie is filled with things that I have little use for--colorblind casting, thematically pointless multiculturalism, Kevin Kline--I found it surprisingly watchable. The Japanese setting does not distract overmuch, and it largely vanishes once we reach Arden: a forest is a forest. Most of the performers are capable, and a few--Adrian Lester, David Oyelowo, even Brian Blessed--are better than that. Some of the scenes are played with conviction and warmth, and prove unexpectedly touching. This isn't a good As You Like It, or a good film, but it's the first piece of Branaghian Shakespeare since Henry V that isn't a complete waste of time.
  
  
• Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?
  By A21DZRY1MFMK1H on 2008-06-21
  Can a Shakespeare gender-bending comedy ever work on film? Onstage one buys the convention that a gorgeous woman can convince everyone that she is really a he, but I've yet to see it work on film. Bryce Dallas Howard is talented and gorgeous, but it takes another kind of sex appeal to play Rosalind. It takes a woman who isn't afraid to convincingly play a man! Kate Hepburn could have pulled it off, or a young Emma Thompson, but Ms. Howard never even attempts to walk in a man's shoes. That spoils the fun, the dramatic (and sexual) tension, and the plausibility.
  
  As with every Branagh film, there's much to like: A brilliant opening that sets the stakes high, clear and specific actors' choices, gorgeous art design, yadda yadda, but frankly, I think Branagh was in love with his leading lady.
  
  
• I had a hard time deciding what to rate this movie.
  By A2QQCXAF3XVGIJ on 2008-01-13
  I couldn't decide how many stars to give, three or four, I decided on four. My reason, I liked the movie. I laughed in it and enjoyed the romance. I loved the beauty of the music and the scenery. I liked the directing, the play was easy to follow and the words well spoken. Why I almost gave it a three is because it was set in Japan (what was up with that???) and Rosalind when playing a man shouldn't have been so made up. The main reason though was because I asked my dog the same thing another reviewer asked their cat, "Did this tell you why Rosalind had to stay dressed as a man?". In Kenneth's quest to make Shakespeare dearly loved by many he changed too much for those of us who already dearly love Shakespeare. However, Shakespeare is not the Bible and William did his best to make the plays accessible to the masses and so does Kenneth so I only knocked down one star instead of two. It is no Henry V though, the greatest movie of all but worth watching and better than 99% of the drivel that is called entertainment.
  
  
• The Perfect Balance
  By A2CVN06KGC93YZ on 2007-10-03
  This AS YOU LIKE IT is a mixture of comedy and serious issues involving estranged brothers, a desposed duke, and forced and voluntary exile. In this imaginative production the terror and the comedy are well balanced resulting in a somewhat odd combination of comedy and emotion. But this is the wonderful complexity of Shakespeare. There are some cuts in the dialogue, but all in all it results in the best and most coherent telling of the story I have ever seen in the play. And I have seen a lot of productions of this play. Enjoy it for its imagination, freshness, and beauty.
  
  
  

• William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
• Twelfth Night
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Henry V
• Love's Labour's Lost