Much Ado About Nothing (1984)

Great Film overall

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The greatest fault of this performance is that many of the actors could not do justice to the words of Shakespeare. There are no subtitles. Some of the dialogue in Much Ado is in prose and some is in poetry (pentameter), but here one could hardly tell the difference. The actors put all their energies in emoting, making faces, flailing their arms around in meaningless gestures -- but they failed to enunciate. Some were worse than others. The actress who played Beatrice sometimes spoke much too fast, rushing the words together and producing gibberish. She was pretty, but that didn't compensate from her inability to deliver the Shakespeare words. The sound quality was not good, which made things even worse. The sets and costumes were nice enough, and the actors looked good enough, but so what? I'd rather watch a Shakespeare play on a bare stage, where the actors just wore blue jeans and T-shirts -- so long as I really heard the Shakespeare lines.

I heard about this version several years ago but never got a chance to see it until recently. It has been raining here steadily for the past three weeks and this film made the day seem inexplicably sunny. Wow! What a wonderful cast and what fabulous direction! At every turn, I found myself understanding a phrase or word that I had hitherto (how articulate, young neophyte!) not understood.Robert Lindsay and Cherie Lunghi are simply wonderful. The chapel scene is simply breath-taking. When Benedick professes his love for Beatrice, I swear my heart skips. And then we are treated to her response - Ms. Lunghi speaks volumes with her delivery of "Ah!". I also think Mr. Lindsay does a great job with his "bird's nest" speech to the Duke.Katharine Levy does a particularly good job with the (usually) boring part of Hero. There was wonderful chemistry between her Hero and Lunghi's Beatrice. It made Beatrice's despair in the chapel scene so much more believable.The entire piece from start to finish is flawless. I loved all the little things happening between characters in the background - a bump here, a nudge there. I find something new each time (and it has been several now) that I watch it.Great job! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Saw it 21 years ago, and still remember it as fabulous. Lindsay and Lunghi are delightful. it's work like this that really shows why Auntie Beeb is a national (international) treasure. OK, so I'm a refugee Limey, but why is it that American TV can't produce anything even a tiny fraction as good as this?I really don't have too much to say about the production itself, since I saw it so long ago. It's just that I have such a wonderful, warm memory of it.Incidentally, I like the Branagh production. Just rented it to watch this evening, as a matter of fact, to get a bit of a bard fix. But if my local video rental shop had offered the BBC version, I'd have grabbed that one instead in a flash.

Lunghi and Lindsay are the savory core of this handsomely done comedy. They make it divinely clear that conflicts of the heart far outweigh a mere war of wit and word. Beatrice and Benedick open before our eyes with beauteous ambivalence. At first brittle and glib and tightly closed, they are drawn together by conspiratory deceit, which acts only to release the truth of their emotional vulnerability and allow them to find what they dared not wish for; the perfect mate. A very thoughtful and nuanced version of the play.