A fictional story about the making of Romeo And Juliet.

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 1999)

A story about young playwright Will Shakespeare, who after years of works creates a masterpiece: Romeo And Juliet. A love story that makes his name remembered. The idea is brilliant, but the result is something entirely different. The movie focuses all too much on Romeo And Juliet, maybe because a couple of years back the new version of the play was released and gained huge respect among people everywhere. This was the most critical mistake the movie crew made. The brilliant idea for a movie was spoiled by excessive Romeo And Juliet- scenes, because now anyone who has seen Romeo And Juliet has really nothing to see in Shakespeare In Love. The sentence "Additional dialogue by William Shakespeare" in the movie credits should have been replaced with "Dialogue mainly by William Shakespeare". The main theme in the movie is the making of Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, and the secondary theme is a regular predictable love story between Shakespeare's and actress Viola De Lesseps. This movie has nothing special to offer, and is not even all that amusing (as a comedy is expected to be). The fact that this totally common movie, with a plot exactly like all comedy flavored love stories through history won the Oscar for the best movie, is beyond my understanding. Gwyneth Palthrow's performance is not bad at all, but hardly worth an Oscar, either. The only bright spot in the movie is Shakespeare's brilliant dialogue, and that proves the lack of imagination by the writers.