Much Ado About Nothing

When Branagh's camera soars above the final celebratory dancing and choral anthem, you'll soar, too. [21 May 1993, p.23]

Much Ado about Nothing is a gem of a movie - a real find in 1993's sea of mediocrity. Branagh has successfully used a mixed cast of "names" and "unknowns" to breathe life into this lavish production, and never has Shakespeare been more warmly received. I'm not sure if "feel good" has ever been used to describe a picture based on the Bard's work, but the expression fits. This film cements Branagh's status as a great director of Shakespeare, and perhaps of film in general, as well.

He has taken a Shakespearean romantic comedy, the sort of thing that usually turns to mush on the screen, and made a movie that is triumphantly romantic, comic and, most surprising of all, emotionally alive.

Much Ado, for reasons given below, is not quite up to the level of Henry, but once again Branagh has adapted Shakespeare dexterously. Once again he has followed Granville Barker's advice about pace in Shakespeare, understanding that the essence of pace is not speed but energy. Once again he has excellent colleagues off-camera, most notably Doyle, that open-throated composer, and the editor Andrew Marcus, who knows how to tip in glimpses of others to give dialogues a balletic lift. Once again Branagh has his attractive self on screen. Once again--and may I live to type these words a hundred times more--there is Emma Thompson.

Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing presents a pleasant, simplified, heavily emphatic version of a classic text. [21 May 1993, p.C]

Branagh sets the pace just this side of a Marx Brothers movie.

The climax, in which all the characters link arms in a dance and sing, could serve as a textbook illustration of forced gaiety. Much Ado is much askew.