Some Thoughts On "Much Ado About Nothing."

More like Much Ado About Alcoholism, amirite?!

Ignore that (but seriously, there's so much drinking in this movie; I really marvel at all the character's livers and mine is not unimpressive itself).

Anyway, I find that I feel most provoked to write about movies that I really highly anticipate and that I feel some sort of strong personal affection for conceptually before I have even seen it. I felt this way about Les Miserables since I love the book and the musical and Victor Hugo is one of my favorite authors and the cast was intriguing and allow the reasons to continue on into obscurity. This was why I had so many thoughts about it when it finally saw it and why I could write about it with at least some level of (precieved) authority.

Much Ado About Nothing was another movie like this for me. It's directed by Joss Whedon, it's Shakespeare, in particular Shakespeare where the main relationship is a couple who snarks at each other, it's practically an experiment having been shot in a week and at Whedon's house, and it has a cast of actors that made my jaw drop containing many actors whose presence alone in a movie would be an influencing factor in my seeing it. So yes, I've been counting the days and reblogging the GIFs.

I saw it this afternoon after a half hour journey to the city (well, the nearest approximation of a city that my state can manage) because although I live in a large suburb, our 12 screen movie theater only manages to play the three biggest blockbusters in both 2D and 3D and the token family movie of the week. For the reference, the theater I drove to had 15 screens so it wasn't much bigger. The theater itself was curiously full of old people with only one couple in their 30s near my age range. I was probably the youngest person in the theater in retrospect until some younger people trickled in five minutes into the film proper.

So what was my general impression of the film? I liked it a lot. It was not perfect by any means but it was certainly something I was happy to have seen and would see again many times. When it comes to breaking the film down, with the black and white film, the simple costumes that very well may have been from the actors closets, and the single but beautiful location (all elements influenced by the minimal budget and time restraints) I found myself mostly focusing on three elements: the direction, the acting, and how the Shakespeare was adapted to make this particularly production unique.

The direction was mostly good. Mostly. There were a lot of Whedon trademarks like shots through windows, things happening in mirrors, a good use of background and foreground space and these are all things I have no problem with. My favorite scene from a directorial standpoint was the funeral procession scene which I thought was shot beautifully, staged well, and even had the original music to finish off creating the perfect mood.

Not every shot was gold however. When Benedick is giving his soliloquy about how he will never find a perfect woman and marriage is useless, he is running up and down the stairs as part of an exercise routine. I don't necessarily have a problem with this concept but the way it was shot was terrible. It felt very much like a home movie with the camera either directly in front of or behind him and far too close. I have never once wondered what it would be like to get a piggy-back ride from Alexis Denisof but now I have a good idea of how it feels.

Another problem that occurred a few times was that there were a few scenes that focused for a long time on a particular stationary character and the camera was moving very slowly as if the shot was supposed to be steady but wasn't by fault of human error. Basically, a tripod would have been nice because this also added to the sort of home-spun feel that I felt took away from the movie far more often than it contributed. I was also not a fan of the Dutch angles during the shots of the acrobats at the masquerade party. It felt unnecessary and didn't quite mesh with the rest of the action in the scene.

The editing at times was also jarring. Twice during the film there are fades to white which never really looks natural unless someone in passing out or it's a science fiction movie. Yes, they occurred at the end of fairly crucial scenes but they didn't feel any more significant than the rest of the main action. The white screen almost blanks one's mind of what has happened and the next scene comes on so fresh that you are lost. There were a few other awkward editing bits, mostly scenes that should have been edited down a bit after lingering on the same image for too long (see: the movie poster shot), but those were the worst for me.

Now as for the acting, no one did poorly but there was definitely a gradient of performances. When performing Shakespeare the goal should be to make it sound like regular talking, not reading poetry off a card (even if sometimes you are reading sonnets in the work). For me the two actors who stuck out the most to me in terms of mastery of the language were Clark Gregg as Leonato and Reed Diamond as Don Pedro. They weren't actually in super lead roles but every time either of them was in a scene, they were the ones I was focusing on.

Both Amy Acker as Beatrice and Alexis Denisof as Benedick did well although Acker definitely out-shined Denisof. Overall, she just sounded more comfortable with the dialogue. Her "If I were a man" speech was definitely the highlight of her performance for me. They definitely have good chemistry and they are both still great at physical comedy. The theater I was in was fairly limited in their laughter at dialogue scenes but when Denisof was rolling around in the grass, the theater was in hysterics. They also actually gasped when Beatrice fell down the stairs and I'll admit that I did too; that was a really realistic fall.

Fran Kranz as Claudio was fine and definitely at his best when he had to be very emotional. I don't think it's just residual Dollhouse feelings when I say that when Fran Kranz is mad or sad or overjoyed, you really empathize with him. I mean, I knew Hero wasn't being unfaithful to Claudio and yet, when he was yelling at her about how she cheated on him, I found myself wondering how she could do such a thing too. Jillian Morgese as Hero I honestly have nothing to say about and it's not because she was terrible or anything. I'm struggling to remember if Hero had more than a few lines at all.

Nathan Fillion as Dogberry was great. It bothers me a lot when the fool character in a Shakespeare play is done too over the top and silly and Fillion's performance was the opposite. He played it really deadpan and serious which is even funnier to me than the flamboyant comedy thing. He and Tom Lenk as Verges would make a great buddy cop series.

Sean Maher as Don John was better than I expected, not because I necessarily had a preconceived notion about how Maher would be at Shakespeare but because I never would have really pictured him as a villain. Like how Nathan Fillion kept to a low-key performance, Maher wasn't all maniacal laughter and evil light. He was far more the chessmaster who can play sincere when he's lying to your face and I liked that.

As for the other actors, some of them could have used work but most just weren't particularly memorable.

And onto the last element, the adaption choices. To speak briefly on the things I mentioned before as being dependent on budget and time: the black and white film was inconsequential to me and thankfully didn't come off as some sort of silly artistic statement, there was nothing particularly weird or wrong with the costumes (aside from the fact that Hero chose to get married in something she had just lying around; that was a bit strange), and the location worked almost the whole time. The only complaint I have about the location was the fact that the police station really did look like a thrown together space in one of Joss's less-used rooms. It looks almost like they just put some wanted posters on the wall and called it a night. The positive thing I can say is that they really utilized the space and got a lot of great shots out of it.

The biggest addition to this adaption is the back-story between Benedick and Beatrice that I really go back and forth on. The movie has created this idea that Benedick and Beatrice have actually had a one night stand prior to the events of the story and that they also had sex during the masquerade ball. The very first scene of the movie is of Benedick putting his pants on and quietly leaving Beatrice in bed while she pretends to be asleep. The implication seems to be that by day they hate each other but they can ignore that once enough alcohol is applied. One of the things that bothers me about this is that based on Beatrice's character, I can't quite decide if this is in character for her. It's definitely in character of Benedick to try to get her in bed but I don't know if it is for her to agree. Maybe if she's really drunk? The other thing about this scene that bothers me is that I can't decide if this adds more plausibility to their underlying feelings or less. Are they drunken hookups for each other because deep down there is a genuine attraction and respect for each other that blossoms into love or is it really just a shallow thing that turns into a shallow thing in the daylight? I can't decide but I know the movie is trying to tell me it's the former. I think I just need to stop deconstructing it and just take it the way it was intended.

One hilarious addition to the story is that when Don John's two henchman are chatting about the trick they just played on Claudio, making him believe Hero was cheating on him, they insult the prince and are arrested for it while they were smoking a joint. The entire time they are getting convicted of slander, it's actually hilarious that the joint is just ignored entirely. I don't even see this as a directorial oversight. I see this as another joke on the police force's ineptness. They see two people breaking drug laws and book them for a few minor slanderous remarks instead. There's also the addition of Dogberry and Verges locking themselves out of there car when they try to leave the estate which is just delightful.

Other than that, there weren't too many drastic changes to the original idea or text and in one case this was really awkward. After the scene where Claudio calls out Hero for cheating on him, a scene that is slut-shaming in itself but not wrong if you think of it as him shaming her specifically for cheating on him (and right before their wedding) and not for any sex she may have had before they got together, Hero is heartbroken and Leonato's response to this is to tell her that she'd be better off dead for being such a disgrace. I would like to believe that this would be an awful thing to say to your daughter in Shakespeare's time as well but in this modern context it is literally unbelievable. I guess there's nothing to be done about the original script but, man, is it difficult to watch. Also, the your-douchebaggery-killed-my-daughter-so-now-you-have-to-marry-her-cousin thing: really odd in a modern context but a lot less awkward that the scene I just mentioned.

The only other thing I can think to mention is the music which was simple but effective in composition and used Shakespeare's songs from the play anyway so I can't say much there. Oh, and I loved that Maurissa Tancharoen actually appeared at the party singing after a minute of me thinking the music was just being played on an iPod. Surprise lounge singer!

I think that sums everything up. In conclusion, it's definitely worth your time.

And look I didn't mention the Fred/Wesley ship in Angel once during this review! Or how using their actors to play the leads in the movie sometimes made me think that Fred and Wesley actually got a happy ending instead of both dying horribly on the show!

Crap.