All of these rationalizations collapse before the beauty of the women, and the eight men and women pair off into four couples so quickly it's like choosing sides for a softball game. Then we get the songs, some of them wonderfully well staged, as when "Cheek to Cheek" (with its line "Heaven . . . I'm in heaven . . . ") has them floating in air beneath the stars painted on the underside of the dome of the king's library.
The eight starters are joined by low-comedy relief pitchers, in the tradition of all Shakespeare comedies. They include Timothy Spall as a Spaniard whose "I Get a Kick Out of You" is a charmer, and Nathan Lane (who does a nice slow-tempo "There's No Business Like Show Business"). Alicia Silverstone is the lead among the women, who playfully do a synchro-swimming version of "Fancy Free," and Branagh gives himself the best male role, although not tilting the scales to an unseemly degree.
All is light and winning, and yet somehow empty. It's no excuse that the starting point was probably the weakest of Shakespeare's plays. "Love's Labour's Lost" is hardly ever performed on the stage and has never been previous filmed, and there is a reason for that: It's not about anything. In its original form, instead of the songs and dances we have dialogue that's like an idle exercise in easy banter for Shakespeare.
It's like a warm-up for the real thing. It makes not the slightest difference which boy gets which girl, or why, and by starting the action in 1939 and providing World War II as a backdrop, Branagh has not enriched either the play or the war, but fit them together with an awkward join.
There's not a song I wouldn't hear again with pleasure, or a clip that might not make me smile, but as a whole, it's not much. Like cotton candy, it's better as a concept than as an experience.
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