Shakespeare In Love

At first, John Madden's film seems to play strictly to the groundlings. We're in London in the '90s -- the 1590s, though the film's deliberate postmodern anachronisms might make you think otherwise -- and Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of the Rose Theatre, is trying to reassure moneylender Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson) that the upcoming production from hot new prospect William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) will rake in enough at the box office to pay off his debt. Fennyman responds by having his stooges burn Henslowe's feet. Shakespeare, meanwhile, unhappy in love and blocked in his writing, complains on a couch to his Woody Allenish therapist about his "broken quill." Add to this that everyone except the love interests has bad teeth and the background features as much crud and offal as silk and brocade and you have a shaggy-dog Bardic farce that resembles more There's Something About Mary than A Midsummer's Night Dream.

Yet from this dross Shakespeare weaves a confection of scintillating wit and aesthetic resonance, a process that is pretty much the theme of the film, which was co-written by Tom Stoppard at his impish Rosencrantz and Guildenstern best. While torturing himself over his latest work, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter, Will falls in love with the unapproachable Lady Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is secretly acting in his theater company disguised as a boy. Their love dialogues and misadventures have a familiar ring -- they are in fact the rough drafts of the lines and scenes to be immortalized not only in the play about star-crossed lovers Will is daily revising, but in future works like Twelfth Night and The Tempest. Although determinedly lightweight, Shakespeare in Love is a self-reflexive ode to the power of art and love that at times is worthy of its namesake. At the Showcase Cinemas Route 6.

-- Peter Keough