By its very title, Much Ado About Nothing is immune to criticisms about its triviality. In its central conceit, it’s one of Shakespeare’s silliest comedies, and he must have known it.
But its structure of combative, polarized characters gradually coming to love one another has become a romantic comedy archetype for the ages, and its other, opposite storyline, about an immediately love-struck couple whose coupling is disrupted by outside deceit and misinformation, can take on an occasionally tragic pathos when done well.
Much Ado has been entrancing filmmakers since 1937, and the latest director to attempt an adaptation is the great television auteur Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), whose modern-day, black-and-white, plainclothes version hits theaters Friday as the unlikely meat in his Avengers sandwich. Purists can rest easy: Shakespeare’s lovely language is entirely retained. The governor’s mansion in Shakespeare’s original is, in Whedon’s incarnation, a pleasant country estate, with a simple, laid-back luxury – a vast remove from the bombastic Technicolor dazzle of Jay Gatsby’s newest cinematic abode.
This is a rich people’s feast done the art-house way, with tinkling wine glasses, a spotless pool, a live singer crooning bossa nova-style music, and a pair of acrobats gracefully dangling in mid-air, as a gaggle of well-dressed, attractive Caucasians discuss matters of the heart with hilarity and mischief. This is a movie that is seemingly tailored to appear on the website “Stuff White People Like.”
And the fact is, I did really like this adaptation; the cast is uniformly excellent, and it is perhaps one of the few Shakespeare worlds I wouldn’t mind inhabiting. (Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are not aspirational stories.) Alexis Denisof is Benedick, the officer and confirmed bachelor who is tricked into falling in love with his sworn enemy, the governor’s daughter Beatrice (Amy Acker), whose repulsion for Benedick is likewise tested and altered by her companions.
Fran Kranz plays Claudio, the young count who is smitten with Hero (Jillian Morgese), the governor’s other fair daughter; trickery will undo this match made in heaven as quickly as cupid’s bow fires its amorous arrows at Benedick and Beatrice. When the misled Claudio unloads wicked invectives toward Hero on the day of their nuptials, the confrontation hits you like a slap in the face, and stings for the length of the scene and then some; the movie becomes, for a while, much ado about something.
The cast also includes Nathan Fillion as Dogberry and Tom Lenk as Verges, the constable and night watchman for the governor’s estate, whose general incompetence suggests a deadpan Keystone Kops talkie. Operating in a meager police station with clunky personal computers as old as Shakespeare, they generate some of the film’s heartiest laughs – ditto to the inspired bumbling and pratfalls of Denisof and Acker.
More importantly, the entire ensemble, while lacking star power, has the crucial ability to speak in Shakespearean dialect and make it sound authentic as it rolls off their tongues. This Much Ado only sounds jarring at first, but you’ll quickly grow accustomed to a world in which characters say things like “knave” and “doublet” and “thou knowest” while operating iPods and incongruently snorkeling, martini in hand, in a Sunset Boulevard pool. This film is an utter delight.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Director: Joss Whedon; Cast: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Fran Kranz, Jillian Morgese, Clark Gregg, Nathan Fillion, Tom Lenk, Reed Diamond; Distributor: Lionsgate; Rating: PG-13 Opens: Friday at Regal Delray Beach 18; Regal Shadowood 16, Living Room Theaters and Cinemark Palace in Boca Raton; The Classic Gateway Theater in Fort Lauderdale; AMC Aventura 24; and Regal South Beach 18, AMC Cocowalk 14 and AMC Sunset Place 24 in Miami.