The greatest romantic comedy of ALL TIMES

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2002)

I really cannot understand why this magnificent movie draws such horrific comments from some people. It just strenghtens my opinion that the cultural level in the western world it's too low nowadays... As for me, this movie is MY NUMBER ONE MOVIE OF ALL TIMES, but this is only a my subjective point of view. Anyway , I'm not exactly a newcomer in this art, viewing that I'm studying movie directing at the Media University in Bucharest. Back to the movie, it is really difficult to begin with something, so numerous are the qualities of this movie. It is simply THE GREATEST SCREENPLAY of all times, with countless gems, witty lines, twists (it is NOT PREDICTABLE OF ALL!), a really luminous down ending(which is a very rare thing). EVERYBODY, BUT I MEAN EVERYBODY, has something "to eat" in this movie!...No character is here by chance, from the kid John Webster to Will Shakespeare, the appearance of every character has some meaning. And the development of the plot, reallly of Shakespearean quality, is interweaved magnificently with Romeo and Juliet, the play wich we rediscover in this movie('cause too often we think we've seen all and we know everything about Shakespeare's plays but really we DON'T). It takes a genius of the dimensions of Tom Stoppard(let's not forget Marc Norman) to make this kind of devilishly clever script. The Academy made, in that year, maybe one of it's smartest choices(alongside of the year when they gave the Oscar to Ordinary people). Saving private Ryan seemed to have all the upper hand there. It was very "american", with a patriotic message, spectacularly directed, and it was representing a very ambitious to win Steven Spielberg, who is, probably , the most powerful man in film industry right now. But no, the Academy voters were not stupid. They KNEW, they understood very well that Ryan has virtually no plot, it is a heavy handed, "mechanical" , predictable plot, with a cheesy patriotic ending. On the other hand , Shakespeare in love had all the odds against it. Released in december, it was representing nobody(except for Bob Weistein, the Miramax boss). John Madden was a nobody, Tom Stoppard was not very well known in America, Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow were not very known and beloved in America(compared to Tom Hanks), it was a British period piece...Some would have said "Come on, you really expect this to win over Saving private Ryan?!" But it did...Deservedly... Shakespeare in love has definitely the greatest original score of all times. I really cannot praise enough how great the music composed by Stephen Warbeck for this movie is.The last twenty minutes in the movie are really one of the greatest moments of cinemamaking in history, and the final shot is THE GREATEST SINGLE FINAL SHOT OF ALL TIMES... So, don't listen to the opinions of some uneducated guy, listen to somebody that KNOWS. Go and rent this movie, have a little patience at the beginning, 'cause after that, you will want to see it over and over again...