William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream [1999]

Amazon.co.uk Review

By far the best thing about director Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream is the extraordinary all-star cast, which follows the precedent created by Kenneth Branagh's Italian-set romantic Shakespeare comedy, Much Ado About Nothing (1993), of mixing major Hollywood stars--here Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer--with top British talent, in this instance Christian Bale, Rupert Everett, Roger Rees, David Strathairn and Dominic West. Kline makes a fine Nick Bottom, with Pfeiffer equally good as the fairy queen Titania and Everett brooding effectively as Oberon. Unfortunately, while both look ravishing, it is hard to tell which actress between Anna Friel (Brookside) and Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal) gives the most wretched performance. Both are completely out of their depth the moment they begin to speak, and utterly outclassed by the excellent Sophie Marceau.

Shot in Tuscany and set in the 19th century, parts of the film are extraordinarily beautiful, while other sections could have benefited from some judicious special effects magic. This is not a bad movie, but it is rather uninspired, lacking any real imaginative grasp of the play. In contrast, the much less well known and lower budget Royal Shakespeare Company version of 1996 positively revels in the fantastically surreal possibilities this timeless text. --Gary S Dalkin

Customer Reviews:

Oh Dear Lord, Make It STOP!.......2007-11-22

How can I communicate the aberration that this represents?
I hope that a number of you will be repelled simply to hear that the roles of Hermia and Helena are taken (and then forgotten about) by those mascots of "Pretty but Pointless", Calista Flockhart and Anna Friel. Calista Flockhart rides a Penny Farthing bicycle and blows the tumbling tendrils of hair off her forehead regularly - but it gets worse, even when the talent gets more accomplished.
Stanley Tucci would get laughed off a senior school stage for the way that he tries to invest Puck with thoughtfulness and fun: Jimmie Krankee would have done a better job. Rupert Everett's Oberon is reminescent of a Studio 54 Go-Go dancer murmuring something he has a distant memory of, and Kevin Kline's gurning Bottom made me feel like setting fire to something.
Despite having a bunch of very pretty people (and, in Michelle Pfeiffer's Titania, a certified, Grade A beauty), this is a version of Shakespeare's comic masterpiece without a single ounce of sex in it. It would have been infinitely better as a Vogue fashion spread and accompanying touring exhibition.
Heinously awful.

An inadequate version.......2007-09-10

Although visually attractive, there is little to praise in this version.
The text is so full of delights that it musty have taken real effort to come up with such a tedious version. The comic elements were especially lack lustre. Nothing would induce me to sit through it again.

Best version I've seen so far of this entertaining play.......2007-09-04

I've only one minus really on this production, that this Oberon isn't quite as good as the Oberon in the Beeb's Shakespeare Retold set - that Oberon was quite wonderful although the production generally was mediocre. However, this Oberon is perfectly good in what's such a delightful version of the play. I enjoyed the setting and the bicycles and yet maintaining the Shakespearean ethos throughout.

Particular accolades to Kevin Kline. Brilliant performance. Worth having really just for him!

Best version I've seen yet of this great Shakespeare play.......2007-08-22

Splendid acting, splendid scenery, splendid conception altogether and especially from Kevin Kline who avoids making Bottom a bit of a twerp but instead presents him as a man with intelligence. My favourite part of Midsummer Night's Dream has always been the play within a play about Pyramus and Thisbe, and as always had me convulsed (ie with laughter).

I saw the BBC "Shakespeare retold" version awhile back and that wasn't nearly as good - indeed was sometimes quite boring and the play within a play was turned into two or three very poor modern-style variety acts. So I think it proves this isn't the easiest play to update to the present, although the Beeb's version did have the edge with Titania and Oberon who I think were even better conceived than in this version, but that doesn't detract from this Titania and Oberon as they are excellent. This version highly recommended and very more-ish.

Very good acting with ironically fine sense of period.......2007-06-05

Strangely enough for a play written in the Tudor era and possibly set in Ancient Greece, this presents a very rich Victorian England to us. It's all there- the costumes, the bicycles, the grand English accents, the Duke's beautiful palace. It could have been slightly better if set in England as there are no Italian accents.
If you are reading the play, as has every schoolchild down the ages, then you just do not comprehend what is happening as well as you do here. I think that this is a superlative film and would definitely recommend it.

Customer Reviews:

Crystal Healing,.......2006-09-04

Produced in a documentary type style, This Dvd is beautifully narrated in clear concise English, the visionary content was clear.
You are given a brake down on The Fall of Atlantis & a history of the use & alleged misuse of Crystals in that ancient civilization .
The Dvd shows slides of different crystals shows how to including both Chakra & colored healing with in the Crystal healing. Their are practical demonstrations & different healing layout.
What let this dvd down was the drab 1960 decor were they were demonstrating. & the Tibetan bowl that was meaning less at the end.
But hay was this educational YES. Could someone learn a healing lay out from this dvd YES so perhaps I am being picky by even mentioning some one's choice of decor.
Gillian Evans. T/A net essence

Crystals are not as dull as this DVD!.......2005-03-03

This DVD is just awful, no other word for it...except perhaps, slow, boring, amateurish & Yuk!.
The video content is poorly lit, out of focus, dull, washed - out colouring, grainy and at times fuzzy.
The sound quality is poor, narration monotonous and uninspiring, scripting is confusing and gives mixed-messages about the benefits of Crystal Healing.
It's almost as if the writer has mixed the script up and is reading a bit from one page and then a bit from another and you end up wondering where he's actually going and what on earth he's trying to share with us!
This DVD didn't teach me a thing (seriously!) about Crystal Healing or give me the slightest motivation to go and visit a Crystal Healer...in fact it almost scared me when I saw one of the "Crystal healers" performing a session on a client.
A man was laid, flat-out on a weird-looking massage couch, with a dark purple curtain over him...and he was so still, he looked dead....as if he was ready to be viewed in the morgue. Yuk, horrible, unprofessional DVD, not worth the money, wouldn't even consider it for comedy value.
The only benefit of this DVD would be to show it (or a small section of it!) to potential Film/Media Students on "How not to make a Video!" I'd recommend that!
So - don't buy it, don't rent it, just bypass it on your way to one of the brilliant books about Crystals that Amazon stock!

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