Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

Directed by: Joss Whedon
Written by: Joss Whedon, William Shakespeare 
Starring: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Fran Kranz, Jillian Morgese, Sean Maher
Rated: PG-13

There is a theatre in London just south of the river called the Old Vic which almost single-handedly revived the dying world of Shakespeare in the 1920's. A very talented assortment of artists fashioned their individual points of view on how to interpret the Bard for the stage and brought about a rebirth for a style of theatre that was very much on the down and out. Joss Whedon, the superhero heartthrob who gave us "The Avengers", has taken a page out of their book, probably unknowingly, in his small adaptation of one of the most well known of Shakespearean comedies.

For all of the changes that Lillian Baylis and others made to the Old Vic, one thing was key to bringing Shakespeare back into a rough and dangerous area of England. By their thinking Shakespeare did not write to be dissected and elevated, but rather wrote for the masses. The type of people who surrounded the Old Vic where the types that would have seen the Bard's work some hundreds of years prior. They were poor, they were rowdy, and they simply wanted some Friday night entertainment without breaking their pocketbooks. Baylis tapped into that in Shakespeare's work, stripping down productions and speeding up the dialogue, ridding it of academia and leaving audiences to feel the rhythm of the scenes and engage with actors more than breaking down the words that were being spoken. It was cheap and it was smart.

Whedon has done this here in a way. Shot at his very beautiful home with none of the big budget tricks of some other modern adaptations, he has made a performance-based home movie that really just falls back on the solid foundations of the greatest English writer. I don't think it was a terribly good adaptation and nobody will remember it in a year's time, but it has bounce and for those of you going on a date night it certainly has a rom-com appeal.

Mediocre performances abound in a story that I have never been particularly fond of. Like so many of his plots this one is about love, transgressions, and how the basic elements of human nature stupidly keep us from achieving happiness. The characters do find happiness, of course--it's a comedy after all--but pride and jealousy and naivety threaten to stop the budding romances of Claudio and Hero (Fran Kranz and Jillian Morgese) and Beatrice and Benedick (Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof).

For a while I wondered why Whedon would choose this play to do above all the others. I still can't fully justify it, but I have managed to partly convince myself that there is relevance regarding the overblown problems of the rich and bored. The other part of me says this director just had some extra money lying around and two weeks to spare and decided it would be best spent with some friends doing a play for the camera. That's nice, but it did feel rushed and rather makeshift. Easy attempts at physical humor wore out their welcome quickly and had every sign of rushed direction.

In the end it seemed to me that this would be a blah piece of theatre and was definitely a blah piece of cinema. There was a group of sorority girls sitting towards the front of the venue, however, who cackled and guffawed from the opening credits to the final scene, so maybe Whedon did something correct. Those girls paid their tuppence for their easy breezy entertainment and lo, they were entertained. So what if Denisof couldn't match Acker's fire? So what if Morgese slurred out half of her words and Kranz took his performance to the ugly realm of melodrama? So what if the characters themselves really made no sense in the time and space Whedon designed for them? The film is simple and unadorned, and the masses are pleased. That's probably all Whedon wanted from the onset.

2/4