Love sings and dances its way into our hearts

Reviewed by
Tom Draper

It all starts out one morning in the library.
It's one of those days where the young King — edgy, restless, discontent, maybe even marginally hung over — you know those Kings, especially the ones who have just started shaving — for want of anything better to do, what he does is hook his three best friends into signing a pledge — three guys, mind you, who are novices with their razors, too — so, of course they all three fall for it hook, line and sinker when the King decides that they have to get down to business, the business at hand being developing their organs — specific organs, actually — their minds — what they need to do is concentrate on their college studies, the King has decided.

Well, they've been neglecting their studies, not developing their minds for all the usual reasons — which probably explains why it's so easy for the King to talk these boys, young men who take themselves way too seriously — he succeeds in talking his three best friends into signing what sounds dangerously, suspiciously like a chastity pledge.
Who knows — maybe he had his man write it for him, and maybe it was that guy who had such a good sense of humor. The question of authorship of the proclamation coming up because it is a singularly loopy idea, these four young studs all swearing they will buckle down, give up booze and parties, and, the silliest clause of all — they swear to give up women!
And they swear all that based on nothing stronger than their love for each other and some sort of loyalty to the crown, but mainly because they're fools enough to think they're such hot young things, they can do just about anything they want to do!
Well, they probably could do just about anything but this one thing! They have no idea that they could proclaim themselves till their tongues turned blue, but what's going to determine whether or not they hang out with women has nothing whatsoever to do with loyalty or love of friends or the King's crown, however exalted!
These boys are growing some organs, for sure.
Organs strong enough to bend steel, destroy truckloads of proclamations, take that crown and show the world what it's really for — organs meant to get out there and do a real job.
The organ that will decide whether or not they play with the ladies has more to do with making babies than ever it will have to do with solving mathematical or historic or philosophical riddles, and this Princess from France and her friends are exactly the right women to teach these young men what kind of proclamation they should be learning about.
What they need to concentrate on is juicy, messy love — the kind they'll find inside themselves, not the drier variety they're likely to find in books.

Critics had a bit of a hard time with this movie.
Shakespeare is, after all, meant to be taken seriously.
You talk about the Bard, you have to at least pretend you know something. And Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost just ain't that kind of movie. It's done in such a lighthearted, relaxed way — it won't let you buckle down, get serious. It's as though Branagh is saying — go ahead, take that proclamation seriously — I'd rather dance!
So, some people figured that here was a chance to bury Branagh, make proclamations of their own — tell the world that the King is dead.
I don't think so.
Love's Labour's Lost is fun!
It's gorgeous, lovely to look at and the music of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern — what's not to like?
Historically Branagh chose to set the film in 1939 Europe.
He uses a photogravure format beautifully, skillfully, fading back and forth between color (the present) and a grainy beige that dissolves to black and white when narrating the past, the narrator faithfully reproducing a WW II BBC cinema news style which includes crackly static.

Love's Labour's Lost features wonderful show tunes sung and danced with great spirit.

Nathan Lane is the film's only Broadway veteran, and he struts his stuff, but not only with schtick (he does a bit with a rubber chicken) — he also contributes a lovely, slow version of There's No Business Like Show Business.
Nearly everyone else wings it, does their amateur best to have fun with script and cast and the music they have inside themselves.
For my money, they succeeded wildly.
Even Geraldine McEwan as Holfernia, and Ian Stuart Robertson as Hippolyte, a pair of veteran British Shakespearean actors, fit with this group of youngsters, actors as new to the language of Shakespeare as they are to the language of song and dance.
This is one of those classic young at heart movies, one of those films, if you missed it in the theatre, wait till it comes out of video.
It's worth taking the time to see.

photos courtesy of http://us.imdb.com/studios
poster thanks to: http://www.nostalgia.com