Huh.

Rating: 5/10 (11 October 2019)

I see that the popularity of Shakespeare in Love continues to plummet, twenty years after its arrival on the scene to cheers and praise and awards galore. I never watched it back then because I am not a Gwyneth Paltrow fan. Now that I have finally gotten around to seeing it, I must confess that this production did not change my view of Paltrow in the least. Her performance was just as mediocre as usual, so I have no idea why she was hailed as great and won an Oscar for Best Actress. (Maybe the sex scene? Cf. Monster Ball and Halle Barry) I am equally astonished that this middling effort won the Best Picture Oscar. Maybe because I have watched Rosencrantz & Gildenstern Are Dead (1990), also a riff on The BardÂ´s work, but one which is infinitely more intelligent.
To be perfectly frank, I found general mediocrity everywhere on display in Shakespeare in Love, but I should probably confess that, even setting strict aesthetic measures aside, I do have mixed feelings about making up out of whole cloth ridiculous chick-flick rom-coms about historical figures. Maybe I am just old fashioned. Or maybe I have taste. Or maybe I hate rom-coms. Or maybe all of the above and more.