No, this is not a commentary on the IRS misstepping, or the NSA overstepping, or the Supreme Court sidestepping. This is really about Much Ado, the just-released film of Shakespeare's battle-of-the-sexes comedy, and a delight for the eyes, mind, and heart. My admittedly fulsome review appears below the fold.
If Joss Whedon had done nothing more then script Speed or Toy Story, he would have been a pretty big deal in Hollywood. But he did much more. Working backward, he was largely responsible for two of 2012's better films, including the blockbuster The Avengers (the other was the final, masterful twist on the teen horror movie, The Cabin in the Woods.) Before that came Dollhouse, a daring, controversial, and largely misunderstood exploration of identity and society. He created Firefly, the greatest lost cause in the history of television, and resurrected the cast and storyline in Serenity, a solidly entertaining sci-fi film that stands just fine, thank you, on its own. Before that was Angel, and before that was…
Buffy.
You can argue about whether any one season or episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was up to the standard of any other season or episode, but what is unarguable – and I use that term advisedly – is that Buffy presented us with some of the greatest episodes, characters, and lines in television history. Don't quite buy that? See The Body, the bleakest, most realistic, most heart-wrenching depiction of the death of a loved one ever to hit the small screen. See Hush, where the notoriously verbal Whedon deprives every single character of a voice for almost the entire episode. See Once More With Feeling, a musical episode that has good music, good dancing, and serves a vital dramatic function in the story arc.
Or you can take my word for all of this, and go see Much Ado About Nothing.
You can find the back story of Much Ado on any professional review or Whedon fansite – I'll skip it (although it's a great backstory.) I just want to talk about the film, shot digitally but presented in black and white. The story of two sets of lovers – one overly experienced, the other overly naïve - has been moved from Renaissance Messina to modern day Malibu. The costumes, the settings, the jokes are modern. The language is Elizabethan. Can these crazy kids get together and work things out? Oh, yeah – verily.
Beatrice is one of Shakespeare's strongest female characters, and Amy Acker – a veteran member of Whedon's virtual repertory company, as are most of the rest of the cast – gives us a Beatrice who is not only strong and beautiful, but tender, fragile, and loveable. Whether she is lightly cutting Benedick down to size with a nimble tongue, or protesting the unfairness of gender roles by declaiming, "Oh, that I were a man!", Ms. Acker steals every scene, lights up the screen, and takes us from pathos to slapstick in a matter of seconds. It would be her movie, if it weren't for everyone else.
(Other reviewers have commented on Joss's setting up a backstory for Beatrice and Benedick's passionate feud, calling it clever or heavy-handed, depending on their perspective. I think it's a natural outgrowth of the original text itself, and that Joss has simply visualized and specified it in a way that fits perfectly with the rest of the story.)
Playing Benedick, the object of Beatrice's scorn and sublimated desire, requires a balance between cocksure misogyny and manly compassion, and Alexis Denisof foots the narrow path featly, for the most part. To Benedick fall most of the caricatures of preening manhood, and if it's not always an easy part to make convincing, Denisof makes it at least funny. His transition from the confirmed bachelor to the lovestruck suitor is made more palatable by some wonderful physical – and I mean physical – comedy. It's when the plot turns dark that Benedick becomes a person and not a caricature, and Denisof becomes especially effective.
The reason that this fluffy confection of a tale turns dark is Don John, played superbly by Sean Maher, whom we Whedon fans last saw as the complicated doctor/brother of River Tam, the object of an interstellar manhunt in Firefly and Serenity. No more nice guy in this film – Maher and Whedon give this character real menace, and point it up with some interesting gender-bending in the casting of Don John's hench – well, henchpeople. I thought, by the way, Boracchio was well played, but the character's motivation is always problematic, and it's one of the few problems that Whedon didn't really solve. And to top things off, Don John steals – well, I won't give that away, at any rate.
Fans of the Marvel Avenger-related films will be delighted to recognize Agent Phil Coulson, played by Clark Gregg and resurrected as Leonato, the governor in whose house the action of Much Ado takes place. One of the more insightful comments in other reviews of this movie is that the flighty, inconsistent, overwrought behavior of many of the characters in the film can be attributed to the fact that everyone is drunk most of the time. Blame Leonato, who is constantly offering and pouring wine for his guests, so that everyone is continually inebriated with alcohol and sparkling dialogue.
Nathan Fillion, a Whedon alum who is better known to the world at large as Castle, tackles the dicey role of Dogberry, and once again, his abilities and Whedon's vision give us a buffoon of a different stripe, backed up by a wonderfully cast and acted set of sidekicks and flunkies.
But this review has devolved into a sort of reductionist analysis, and that does not do the film justice. Much Ado is a vision communicated, a shared delight, a cooperative work of the sort that only talented friends can create together. I don't only want to share my perception of the movie: I want you to see it and enjoy it in your own way. Tell us about your favorite moments and characters, and forget, for a little while, the perfidy of the five Don Johns on the Supreme Court, or the antics of the Dogberries in Congress, vagroms all.