As You Like it

There were occasions I had to wonder if the cast had bothered to think about the meaning of their lines. I have known voice synthesisers with better prosody. Simply awful, this.

Excellent acting, good locations, well directed - but after a storming first act or so, it falls falls into stodge.

Most of Mr Brannagh's rep company give brilliant performances (notably Brian Blessed, Richard Briers and Brian Blessed) - but it's not enough.

The main problem is the in-built stupidity of the play. After the downfall of the Duke and the escape of the different parties into the woods, the primary love story is just daft. A woman meets a man who she loves, who is plastering the forest with notes about how much he loves her. The result?

Well, obviously, she has to dress as a man and persuade him to woo her, in her female name pretending she is who she actually is, to prove to him that she can cure him of love by being unpredictable and contrary...

...yes, er, right. What makes Shakespeare speak to modern audiences is that he caputures things that we all can understand and have experienced and puts them on stage. This is nonsense, and no amount of good cinematography and direction can save it.

Go and watch Brannagh's wonderful 'Much Ado About Nothing' instead. Same cast, same director, much better play...

Slickly produced, convincingly acted – but not my cup of tea at all. Two hours of love-struck idiots prancing around in a forest, as far as I could work out. Macbeth this is not. Uninspiring. Unexciting. Odd.

PAIN...That's the only way to describe this film. I really wanted to love it. It has that authenticity whilst still having been diverged from its original settings. However, it lacked any sort of keeping power I simply watched on as I'd already paid that £2.49 to watch the film. Boring and long winded. A stupid waste of time.

No, Mr Branagh, you have not enhanced or made the play more widely appealing and acceptable by divorcing it so drastically from its originally intended location. Presenting it in oriental costume in what appeared to be an English forest setting (judging by the flora) was picturesque but taxed credulity, while the thought of a Japanese or any similar forest producing a ferocious lion is risible.

That said, I think that spending a couple of hours listening to the actors' exquisite delivery of the dialogue justified abandoning my reservations.

Certainly it was all worthwhile in the end when we were treated to a jolly hey-nonny-no and a romp round a theoretical maypole by the cast with splendid Western orchestral accompaniment and not the slightest hint of a flute, drum or shakuhachi.