A Midsummer Night's Dream

Fun to watch version of Midsummer Nights Dream. Good quality.

I love this version of Midsummer Night's Dream...I previewed every version I could find on Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube and this is by far the best. First of all, Hermia and Helena have to be young and beautiful and Lysander and Demitrius have to be young and handsome...so how can you have a version when the lead actresses appear to be in their 30s or older...women got married young back then so it is ridiculous to even cast such actresses in the lead roles. In this version Hermia and Helena are indeed young and beautiful and Lysander and Demetrius are young and exceedingly handsome. The acting is very believable and unaffected...unlike acting done in movies by actors who are used to being on a stage and projecting their lines. The sets are amazing, the scenery breathtaking, the music moving and beautiful, and all the filming and lighting is gorgeous. It's a gorgeous movie overall and I really don't understand those who take issue with the points where it deviates from the original script...I felt it stayed extremely true to the spirit of the original play and included all the best lines from it...in no case was there modern language...it is Shakespearian language throughout, simplified a little bit at times when the meaning would have been obscured to most viewers. Michelle Phieffer is stunning as usual but absolutely radiant as the fairy queen Titania and the Puck in this version is amazing...just the right balance between mischievousness and good cheer. And Kevin Kline is absolutely brilliant as Bottom and his donkey get-up was the most believable and organic of all the other attempts to turn a man into a donkey. In short: bravo!!!

One of Shakespeare's most beloved plays with a bit of everything in it is transfromed from Greece to a mythical duchy in Italy when bicycles were first introduced. It is such a romp and Puck has a part in the chaos of mistaken Identity by magic device. Stanley Tucci is wonderful as Puck. So is Michelle Pfiffer as Titania at odds wih Oberon played by Ruper Everett charming battlers over a boy from India. Bottom, played by Kevin Kline is wonderful and hammy as the stage struck miller who is becomes a real ass for a while but falls in love with the dream of the Queen of the Fairies. Calista Flockhart is delicious in her persuit of her man and with every disappointment utters and dispairing comic "Oh, spite." Beautifully costumed with fantasic fantasy characters that were real to Elizabethan audiences, you can believe in these fairies too.

The setting change to the Gay Nineties on a beautiful Greek (actually Italian, I think) estate is appealing and does no particular harm to Shakespeare's work. The whole thing is visually beautiful. Michele Pfeiffer is a complete surprise as she does a masterful job of Titania's long speeches and looks truly lovely. Oberon is also very good, healthy-looking with a velvety speaking voice, but no depth. I assume those in authority wanted to give Kevin Kline a wider range to act, so Bottom is given a sad clown back story and an angry wife chasing him through the town. Stuff that is supposed to be funny is poignant instead. The lovers are pretty good. Calista Flockhart does her best in spite of being miscast. One scene pivots on the fact that she is a tall blond which, of course, she is not. The pace and acting are very good and it is very enjoyable. Purists will dislike the wide variation in accents from Sophie Marceau's French to Anna Friel's almost Cockney overtones and American here and there. In spite of all that it is a very good movie with some interesting effects, and great musical and visual beauty.

This is a great movie. It's very enchanting.It's a movie that helps you to relax. It helps me to relax anyhow. I'm not sure how far off this is from Shakespeare's original play. It's probably pretty far off. Most movies are very far off from the book or play. That's unfortunate, but it's just the way things are. If you are looking for a version of A Midsummer Night's Dream that is very close to the play/book, you'll probably never find it. So you might as well just stick with this,or just read the book. The acting is superb! With Christian Bale and Anna Friel in the same movie, you can hardly get any better than that. The music is excellent and the screenplay. Everything is done very well in my opinion. The movie is a little bit silly, but then it's fiction.

Correspond à mes attentes, achat d'occasion, donc moins cher et en très bon état. Le dvd marche parfaitement bien! Autrement, il s'agit d'une belle adaptation de la pièce shakespearienne, qui fait bien écho aux répliques de l'œuvre.

The movie is lively and colorful and brings the play to life. I would recommend using it when teaching the original script to high school students. The use of bicycles is innovative and brings in a modern perspective. Hermia and Helen are a bit too similar in size (it adds to the humor if Hermia is much smaller), but are convincing. An added bonus are Bottom's acting (Kevin Kline) and the Mechanicals' play. Kline brings in a great deal of depth, and rather than viewing him as "monstrous" and ridiculous, we actually feel sympathy for him and can perceive Titania and Bottom as types of Beauty and the Beast. In addition, towards the end of the Mechanicals' play Pyramus & Thisbe, the actor playing Thisbe (Sam Rockwell?) stops the ridiculous mannerisms and switches into brilliant, moving acting that reveals suddenly what great performances can do. Shakespeare used the Mechanicals' "medieval style" skit as foil to his own professional play, a type of meta comment on the differences between the old style and the new, professional, modern (Elizabethan) approach. The little twist in acting by Thisbe in a sense contradicts this intention, yet simultaneously focuses attention on what makes performance convincing.

Una película agradable con actuaciones de Michelle Pfeiffer quien fue el motivo por que la compré, Kevin Kline, Christian Bale, Stanley Tucci y Rupert Everett y Calista Flockhart. Basada en la obra de Shakespeare. El dvd tiene subtítulos en Español.

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