Good writing; clichÃ©ed plot

Rating: 5/10 (8 February 1999)

What stopped me from liking this film as much as I should was its plot of Viola in disguised as a man in order to act, because I have seen this type of plot so many times before on countless kid shows from the seventies through the nineties. This turnoff, which really does not seem to be old hat in adult fare, could well be unique to me because I have seen so much of that material both as a child an as an adult, but even so, Stoppard is a brilliant writer, though the fact that this is a collaboration excuses the fact that it's not quite up to _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_. _Brazil_, which he co-wrote was better than this, too, but I don't mean to knock this film so much. The film is amply packed with inside references to Shakespeare and a great integration of the plots of _The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet_ with its supposedly real-life plot. (In actuality, he wrote 11 plays between _R&J_ and _Twelfth Night, Or What You Will, but that's not egregious license, either.) Stoppard's inimitable talent is his ability to make the writing seem more contemporary to Shakespeare than to our own time, and to find jokes that are still funny therein. Judi Dench of Madden's earlier _Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown_ gives a succinctly powerful performance as Queen Elizabeth: very commanding. The bit about the plot is really the only thing negative I have to say about it, simply because it seems a shame that something this well written should be dragged down by something like that.