Undeserving of "Best Picture" award

Rating: 6/10 (21 March 2000)

How this movie beat out the likes of "Life is Beautiful" to win the Best Picture academy award is baffling. It has its moments, but this thing is FAR too long. 45 minutes of this movie is continuous recitation of the characters' lines in the play. "Titanic" was the most overrated movie of all time, but this is pretty close. Gwyneth Paltrow was superb and may actually deserve her Best Actress award. Rupert Everett (Christopher Marlowe) was fantastic as well and probably would have performed the role of Will much better than Fiennes' minimal attempt. The scenery gets a good grade too, but there's nothing else in this movie that deserves a decent comment. It may have deserved a Best Picture nomination because the year gave us such a poor collection of decent shows, but it definitely did not deserve to beat out "Life is Beautiful". I give it a 6/10.