Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

ferdinand1932 As an avowed lover of Shakespeare Branagh has an odd way of demonstrating his affection. His versions of the plays are vastly edited, adumbrated, hacked and stuffed into curiosities.This one is the most bizarre. It is barely the real play "Love's Labours Lost", which is, by most reckoning, not a very good play, and like many Shakespeare comedies suffers from his often irritating humor. Onto that Branagh imposes musical numbers and then again he has a real in-joke using 1940s newsreel with his arch accent as a way of editing the play which is very heavily cut by at least an hour in length.So he packs a cut version of a play into less time and uses two other artistic/media styles into a shorter length. It's a not even the play; he might have called it, "Some Songs and Dance on Old Bill".Walter Benjamin might have used this film in his essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" as an example of how facile it is to transfer properties into a broth which is disingenuous.It takes gall and conceit to construct something that is not one thing nor anything else; that is a travesty on any measure. It's atrocious Shakespeare; it's even more degrading as Busby Berkeley musical as no one can really sing or dance; and as a piece of direction it is starchy, inelastic and very English in all the worst of all possible ways.Murder most foul is the Shakespeare line that comes to mind.

TheLittleSongbird I love Shakespeare and musicals, and I have a great respect for Kenneth Branagh. Love's Labour's Lost was not as bad as I'd heard, but I can actually understand the criticisms as while it does have its charms it is a heavily flawed film. The play is one of Shakespeare's weakest due to how overly-wordy it is, so I knew that when I heard about this film that it can go either way. I will start off by saying that Branagh does deserve credit for trying to make Shakespeare's work accessible to wider audiences, but it uncharacteristically came in mixed results here. I often praise Branagh for his respect and understanding for Shakespeare, but his other films especially Much Ado Nothing, Hamlet and Henry V did this much better. Other than the title and some of the dialogue, which is not the most poetic and witty Shakespeare has done but has evidence of both, there's not really enough that of that Shakespeare feel. That is largely because while making a noble attempt to make the play accessible Branagh oversimplifies the writing and consequently loses the story's consequently making it here thin and too much of an excuse to string song-and-dance numbers one or another.Another consequence is that as a directing job it is on the unimaginative side and feels like too much West End not enough Branagh. There are also two miscasts. Matthew Lillard is a tall, handsome and likable guy, but here he constantly sounds and looks like he's got something up his nose. Even more problematic is Alicia Silverstone, who I liked in Clueless, but I thought she was pretty awful here both as a singer-dancer and as a Shakespearean actor, she can barely sing a note without being breathy and out of tune and is often behind the beat in the singing, and in terms of acting her delivery is always forced and awkward especially in the darker shift of tone. Finally, I usually like Timothy Spall a lot but his I Get a Kick Out of You was for me an embarrassment.On the plus side, the 30s setting is evoked absolutely beautifully, and it is well filmed too. The songs from the likes of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin are outstanding, and the dancing sequences in the film do have a lot of charm and pizazz, especially Let's Face the Music and Dance, There's No Business Like Show Business and They Can't Take That Away from Me. Even though the singing is not exactly great, it isn't entirely awful, the best voice of the entire cast easily comes from Carmen Ejogo. The characters are not that developed, due to the oversimplifications but do have a lot of easy-going charm and likability that I can't hate them. Some members of the cast, namely Branagh, Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan do show an understanding of Shakespeare, how it should sound and feel. I did like most of the performances. Branagh is not entirely convincing age-wise but is enthusiastic at least in his role. Briers and McEwan are splendid, while Nathan Lane is hilarious. I especially loved Natascha McElhone and Adrian Lester. McElhone plays her role with such beauty and depth, and Lester is sublime in his equally sublime musical set piece.All in all, has its charms but for me it is not one Branagh's finest hours. 6/10 Bethany Cox

jerichobrawler Boy, Kenneth Branagh will try anything, won't he? Even infusing Shakespeare's comedy with a string of Gershwin-era songs and dances. But while his Much Ado About Nothing was a frothy, wonderful gem, Love's Labour's Lost . . . just didn't quite work. It's a noble try, though.Whether the concept itself is flawed is up for debate. (Surely some Shakespeare purists were up in arms when this came out!) What cannot be argued, however, is that Branagh's cast is unable to pull this off. They simply are trying to hard at what should come naturally, and the audience can't help but notice. His direction also sinks the film at various points, and as a result, the film jerks from scene to scene, from song to song, ultimately culminating in a collection of bits that never gel into a unified whole.That's not to say that the movie doesn't have its strengths. There is a sense of fun that pervades the film which is quite pleasant. The costumes and art direction are appropriately light and beautiful, and some of the comedy moments are quite fun. Each actor also has his or her strength. Alessandro Nivola (Laurel Canyon, Mansfield Park) is the best singer, Adrian Lester (Primary Colors) the best dancer, Branagh the best actor, and Matthew Lillard (Scooby-Doo) . . . sure is tall. The supporting cast (Nathan Lane, Alicia Silverstone, Emily Mortimer, et. al.) each do their best to rise above the film's shortcomings, as well.Ultimately, the audience ends up really trying to like this movie, but the flaws are too great to dismiss. 6/10 stars.

Howard Schumann There have been successful musicals based on Shakespeare plays such as Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story. In Love's Labour's Lost, however, Kenneth Branagh's attempt to marry Shakespeare to the romantic musical genre of the 30s and 40s, though it has an appealing innocence and charm, doesn't quite come off. The musical numbers such as Just The Way You Look Tonight, I've Got a Crush on You, There's No Business Like Show Business and others from Berlin, Porter, Kern, and Gershwin are timeless of course, yet the songs and dance routines are inserted randomly throughout the film, often without connection to the story. To accommodate the tunes and the elaborate dance routines, two-thirds of the original Shakespearean text has been cut and the result is much good music but Shakespeare in name only.The story itself is slight and the influence of the Italian commedia dell' arte is apparent. The setting is the fictional kingdom of Navarre but Branagh updates it to pre-war Europe in the 30s using parodies of Movietone newsreels to frame the action. The young King (Alessandro Nivola) and his three friends, Longaville (Matthew Lillard), Dumaine (Adrian Lester) and the courtly Berowne (Kenneth Branagh) take an oath that they will devote themselves to an ascetic regimen of study for three years, renouncing the pleasures of women, sleeping only three hours a night, and fasting once a week. Berowne is "the merry madcap lord" whose "…eye begets occasion for his wit; For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns into a moving jest." Of course, the three friends quickly yield to temptation as the Princess of France (Alicia Silverstone) arrives with three women, Maria (Carmen Ejogo), Katherine (Emily Mortimer) and Rosaline (Natascha McElhone). The men fall in love and spend most of the time breaking their oath of abstinence. The theme of oath breaking so prominent in the play may be a gentle ribbing of Queen Elizabeth who, when lodging at Cambridge for five nights in 1564, violated her 1561 proclamation that no woman would ever be permitted to stay overnight at an English university or abbey.As usual, there are clowns inserted for comic relief: the swashbuckling Spanish soldier Don Adriano de Armado, played by Timothy Spall, and Costard, played by Nathan Lane. As Armado confesses that he is in love with Jaquenetta (Stefania Rocca), "a base wench", and Berowne is smitten with Rosaline, an interchange of letters is delivered to the wrong parties and the comic relief soon turns into camp. Love's Labour's Lost is an early work, probably written in the 1580s, that seems to mock the affected style of writing known as Euphuism that flourished in that period. Most scholars agree, however, that touches were added that may date to the early 1590s. Interestingly, the play is not recognized as one of Shakespeare's best and was not performed for two hundred years after its opening. The Branagh film is its first cinematic version.Although the play contains some colorful characters, there is not enough time to allow us to feel invested in any of them and the acting, particularly that of Alicia Silverstone and Matthew Lillard, does not measure up to the standards set by Branagh in his other Shakespeare adaptations. The greatness of the thirties musicals lay in the superior acting and dancing of people like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Without professional singing and dancing, and actors worthy of the bard, updating the genre to the present day is an interesting bit of nostalgia but ends up being more of a spoof than an homage.