As You Like It (2006)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Kenneth Branagh

Writers:

Kenneth Branagh (adaptation)
William Shakespeare (play)

Release Date:

1 September 2006 (Italy)

Genre:

Drama | Comedy | Romance

Tagline:

Romance...or something like it.

Plot:

Rosalind, the daughter of Duke Senior (the banished duke), is raised at the court of Duke Frederick...

Plot Keywords:

Forest | Cross Dressing | Melancholy | Exile | Idyllic Setting

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 1 win

Cast

Takuya Shimada	...	Geisha
Brian Blessed	...	Duke Senior / Duke Frederick
Richard Clifford	...	Le Beau
Bryce Dallas Howard	...	Rosalind
Patrick Doyle	...	Amiens
Romola Garai	...	Celia
Adrian Lester	...	Oliver De Boys
Alfred Molina	...	Touchstone
Kevin Kline	...	Jaques
Janet McTeer	...	Audrey
Gerard Horan	...	Denis
David Oyelowo	...	Orlando De Boys
Richard Briers	...	Adam
Nobuyuki Takano	...	Charles
Paul Chan	...	William

Also Known As:

Come vi piace (Italy) [it]
Opos sas aresei (Greece) [el]
Som ni behagar (Sweden) [sv]

MPAA:

Rated PG for violence and some sexual material.

Runtime:

127 min

Country:

USA | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:PG | UK:12A

Filming Locations:

Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK

Company:

BBC Films

Trivia:

The film has received a Golden Globe nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination in the "Made-for-TV" category even though it was not actually made for television. It was released to theaters abroad before premiering on HBO in the United States. (The end credits feature a "Dolby Stereo in Selected Theaters" credit.)

Quotes:

Jaques: Good morrow, fool!
Touchstone: O sir, call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.

Movie Connections:

Featured in 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (2008) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Blow, Blow

'All the world's a stage'

Kenneth Branagh, aside from being a gifted actor with an enormous range of creative character abilities, has once again brought Shakespeare to life on the screen. His previous excursions into the bard's repertoire have included 'Much Ado About Nothing', 'Henry V', 'Love's Labours Lost', 'Hamlet', and 'Othello', and now he adds one of the bard's most successful comedies AS YOU LIKE IT to his list of successes. Branagh has the gift of making the visual aspects of Shakespeare's stories enhance the language and in doing so he makes Shakespeare sound like brilliant conversation (which it of course is) instead of stilted and brittle old English.

The 'gimmick' used here by Branagh in adapting Shakespeare's play is placing the action in 19th century Japan, and while other less sensitive directors might have opted to insert parody here, Branagh instead makes the story seem all the more plausible - the two feuding brothers (one dark and one light) whose struggle over their estate opens the play before credits with an ingenious silent drama of black leather feudal costumed men invading a genteel house party of lovely people enjoying a Japanese dancer's performance. The original brother is banished with his clan to the Arden forest and there the magic begins. Love between several couples is played in all its manifestations with disguise, misconceptions, lust, and poetry until the play's rollicking end in a song of Hey Nonny Nonny! The lovers include the disguised Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Orlando (David Oyelowo), Celia (Romola Garai) and Oliver (Adrian Lester), the court fool Touchstone (a brilliant Alfred Molina) and Audrey (Janet McTeer), and Sylvius (Alex Wyndham) and Phoebe (Jade Jefferies). Brian Blessed plays the roles of both feuding brothers with style and authority, and Kevin Kline offers a fully realized Jaques - the character who is given the most memorable soliloquies in the play. The settings and imagery (Tim Harvey) are artistic and beautiful and captured with style by cinematographer Roger Lanser, and as with all of Branagh's production the music score (here by Patrick Doyle) is letter perfect and atmospheric.

But in the end the kudos go to Kenneth Branagh for his consistent courage and conviction that Shakespeare's plays are timeless, and his devotion to bringing them to the contemporary audience is to be applauded. This is a fine film - one to own! Grady Harp