A Midsummer Night's Dream (1996)

So much average

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

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.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The news that the former RSC chief Adrian Noble is now planning to make a comedy movie with Meg Ryan sends me back to this, his film directorial debut, based on his successful stage production of 'Dream' in Stratford and London in the mid-1990s. The ideas are great but sadly it doesn't gel, the costumes and settings look cheap and the great acting from the likes of Alex Jennings and Lindsay Duncan looks out of place. Enjoyable then only in fits and starts.

I studied this play at school, saw several stage productions, and loved it, so I was looking forward to this RSC production.So first of all - what's with the little boy? I found his presence annoying and distracting. Sadly, the opening scene was delivered with practically no life, and that's where I switched off, too bored to continue.So obviously, you should take this review with a big pinch of salt, cos I only watched a few minutes.But just a few weeks later, the Kevin Kline version was on TV, late one night. I was highly suspicious, but gave it a chance. I was hooked almost straight away, and all the way through. So make of that what you will....

I would have liked to have seen this production on the stage without the introduction of a boy whose ambiguous presence is supposed to give the production its "dream-"like quality. I'm afraid, as the other reviewers here have noted, a well-intended and, for the most part, well acted version of one of the Bard's best known and most loved romps, alas, fall flat. The RSC is great but I found the presentation of Alex Jennings in the double role of Theseus and Oberon to be unconvincing. His facial expressions reminded me of one who's stepped out of the loo remarking about the lack of potty-paper. Lindsay Duncan, is lovely and fun in her double role as is the feckless Bottom given in fun by Desmond Barrit. Finbar Lynch's Puck has a darkness not often seen in other presentations but it works. My only quibble besides Mr. Jennings perpetual sneer and the wandering (as another reviewer here noted, a Macaulay Culkin look-alike) kid, is the flatness of the effects-- which I'm sure, worked wonderfully on the stage. Cross-overs into other media can be tough. All in all, an earnest albeit not wholly satisfying effort as earlier versions or the one two years later.

After it's been through hundreds of different settings and thousands of different interpretations, it's hard for directors to come up with original concepts for William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". As a result, we either get productions with highly original concepts that are terribly distasteful or we get a rather conventional interpretation that leaves us bored.Adrian Noble has tried to transfer this masterpiece from the stage to the screen, and I'm afraid that he doesn't do a particularly good job. The concepts are original and quite intriguing, but the movie itself lacks the dynamism that this play has when performed on stage. The concept of adding The Boy is in my mind great, especially for the movie. Otherwise, I find the settings bland and monotonous.The Royal Shakespeare Company does an excellent job in acting (of course they do - it's the RSC!) and I would love to see this performed on stage. As for the movie . . . not incredibly satisfying.