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May 13–20, 1999

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William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Bard may get the credit—in the title, even—but after watching this utterly dreadful film you can only picture a red-faced Poor Will shamefully sneaking away, mumbling to himself, "I was young. I needed the money." The iron finger of blame for this lifeless production points squarely at director Michael Hoffman (One Fine Day), who's cheeky enough to claim "written and directed by" credit. (Sure, like Kenneth Branagh wrote the "original screenplay" for Hamlet.) With its multiple pairs of overlapping couples, Midsummer is especially dependent on pace to connect its scattershot action, but Hoffman lets the film go dead after every two-character scene, completely missing the sense of simultaneous action that is essential to Shakespeare's frenetic tale. Instead, the characters languish in their bargain-basement Satyricon surroundings, teeming with ill-lit faeries in various states of carefully concealed undress. The performances here are uniformly flat, from Kevin Kline's melancholic (?) Bottom to Pfeiffer's languorous (as in sleepy) Titania. Calista Flockhart turns Helena into a petulant 4-year-old, while Stanley Tucci's Puck can't manage more than a half-hearted leer. (On the other hand, Bill Irwin is very good as Wall.) A word of advice, Will: start reading those contracts before you sign them.

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