A Midsummer Night’s Dream seemed like a really boring play, at least when compared to the splendid Othello (Iago for teh win! :D ), so I decided to skip reading it, and just go to the showing of the 1999 movie that was arranged as part of this course I’m taking.

The movie didn’t exactly make me regret my choice. Sure, I could probably have read the play itself half a dozen times in the time it took a professor of English literature, two or three students and a security guard to figure out that it was possible to just play the DVD in VLC, rather than in the DVD player, but hey. At least I didn’t have to spend more than three hours on this “comedy”.

You see, the movie wasn’t really all that impressive. It had an awesome cast, some good dialogs, and some slightly funny scenes, but overall, it just seemed cheesy, kitschy and weird. And these first good things? No more than what you get in just about any Shakespeare-based movie.

First of all, the change of setting to Italy in the late 19th century wasn’t a good idea, because it totally undermined one of the main plot mechanisms — the “Athenian” law which gave a father the right to kill his daughter if she didn’t consent to marry the man he chose. Late 19th century? Yeah, right. :roll:

In addition, the fairies had been stuffed into these ridiculous costumes, and placed on some screamingly fake sets, and it all just ended up looking like a French brothel.

But hey, the Shakespeare parts were good, and a couple of characters, too, so I won’t say it was a total waste of time, or even bad in any way. It just wasn’t much better than average.

6.5/10.