What is it with Kenneth Branagh? Why does he fall to pieces every time he steps away from Shakespeare and tries to handle modern stories? Like "Peter's Friends" this is an obvious cartoon about trivial people. Once again, the script is a failure - every plot turn is visible from miles away, like a train wreck at the end of a 5-mile stretch of prairie road. The story, to begin with, is a stale rehash of the "let's find ourselves a barn somewhere and put on a show!" theme. Every character is a cliche, from the nervous little nobody who gets her big chance to play Ophelia, to the outrageous queen who gets to be a literal queen, namely Gertrude. As rehearsals continue, everyone's feelings come out into the open, and it turns out that these earnest thespians may be laughing on the outside but (surprise!) they're crying on the inside. The conventions are dragged out one by one: the two antagonistic actors who find they share a love for David Garrick, the homosexual actor whose son can't accept him, along with the inevitable reconciliation, and of course, the driving force behind the production, the show's Hamlet, who on the eve of the performance must decide whether to leave the show for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to play a big role in America, or stick with his plucky little group of misfits and sacrifice ambition for Art. The only thing that is watchable in this mess is the actual production of "Hamlet" - even with minuscule sets, a jumble of props (including machine guns!), and set in a church, the little bits of the play we get to see are mesmerizing. This is where Branagh shows himself to be a genius - when he is doing Shakespeare, he pours his heart's blood into his work, and it shows. Unfortunately, the less than 10 minutes of "Hamlet" are not enough to compensate for the rest of the movie.
Review of A Midwinter's Tale
