Non-serious view of Shakespeare may be best approach

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 1998)

Shakespeare in Love is a delightful and very funny film. It's unhistorical but an entirely valid artistic appreciation of Shakespeare and his works as popular entertainment in both his time (theater in confined spaces) and our time (this movie is, after all, an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet) and--credit Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman's literate, fast-paced screenplay--poetry and prose for reading.
Joseph Fiennes is very intense as Shakespeare, credible but in his intensity maybe too 20th century in style. Indeed, this is accentuated by a great gag at the beginning in which he lies on a couch and analyzes his situation--writer's block--under the questioning of one Dr. Moth. Gwyneth Paltrow is wonderful as Viola and, when pretending to be a young male actor, does Romeo in so attractive a way I found myself wondering if she could conceivably follow Olivier and Branagh and portray Henry V. Of course, in this film she also has the natural role as a well-endowed blonde of unusual attraction (and acting ability).
All the secondary characters are terrific, particularly Geoffrey Rush as the impresario Henslowe, Martin Clunes as his rival Burbage, and Tom Wilkinson as a less than angelic angel named Fennyman.
As father of a couple of PG/PG-13 daughters, I can hardly wait for a couple of years to show them this movie on tape. Right now the sex is too graphically bawdy. Were it not for this sex, in fact, I would instantly want every high school English I or II class watch this movie for the simple reason that a movie that is great entertainment because it is none too serious should have the great benefit of stimulating a very serious interest in the whole Shakespeare--the bard and the guy, his sonnets and his jokes, the plays on both stage and page.
One unbelievable thing about this film: Universal opened it at exactly one small art house in San Francisco. I just can't believe they didn't put more money into marketing it and open it at several multiplexes. Maybe John (Shakespeare in Love) Madden can give the impresarios and moneymen at Universal some character roles in his next movies to improve *their* characters!