As You Like It

Amazon.com

If you think stuffy old Shakespeare could be livened up with some ninjas, Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) has heard your call. Adapter/director Branagh has set the pastoral comedy As You Like It in feudal Japan, where the characters are still British (they live in a community established by Western merchants) but now have reason to dress up in lush Japanese fabrics and engage in sumo wrestling. Due to a feud between two noble brothers, Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard, The Village) is banished and ends up disguised as a man in a nearby forest. There she tests the faith of her beloved (and also banished) Orlando (David Oyelowo, MI-5), who can't recognize her because she looks like a Dickensian ragamuffin. Meanwhile, a variety of other star-crossed lovers romp around the forest and zen gardens, sparring about love and melancholy. Branagh, never a subtle director, takes every opportunity to squeeze in slapstick and action (like the aforementioned ninjas), but he also keeps the language clear and the movie is beautiful to look at. The strong cast includes Kevin Kline (who previously frolicked in a movie adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Frida), Romola Garai (I Capture the Castle, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights), and Adrian Lester (Hustle, Love's Labors Lost). --Bret Fetzer

Description

Emmy award winner Kenneth Branagh, the man who redefined Shakespeare for a whole new generation with Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet, brings the Bard's most delightful comedy to sensational life! Rosalind is a young woman living in the court of her uncle when she falls in love with Orlando, a young gentleman of the kingdom. When Rosalind is banished, she flees into the forest of Arden disguised as a man...only to encounter Orlando who has also been exiled! But can she win his heart, disguised as she is? With a setting inspired by 19th century Japan and a star-studded cast including Kevin Kline (Dave, A Prairie Home Companion), Bryce Dallas Howard (Spider-Man 3, The Lady In The Water) and Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, The Da Vinci Code), AS YOU LIKE IT once again proves that all the world's a stage. Come enjoy!

Customer Reviews:

I loved it !.......2007-09-06

Imaginatively directed, superbly cast, beautifully acted and wonderfully orchestrated production, with Kevin Kline's presentation of the seven ages of man quite the best I have ever seen, including Stratford and Montgomery!

Kenneth Branagh is on an ego trip.......2007-08-23

Kenneth Branagh's Shakespearean productions have always been perilously chaotic and extravagant, but in this one he's finally gone off the deep end, a hodgepodge of politically correct casting (black hero, white heroine) set in Nineteenth Century Japan, which doesn't even make a stab at historical authenticity. The Bard's beautiful language takes a backseat to a trendy concern for oriental exotica that would gag a maggot. Branagh's delirious intoxication with multiculturalism is pure self-indulgence. In the first ten minutes of the movie, there's a Kabuki play, a Ninja-style attack, a kung fu bout and a sumo wrestling match. Has Branagh gone completely nuts? This isn't homage to Shakespeare, it's a desecration. The worst thing about Branagh's contempt for historical verisimilitude is that it makes a mockery of Shakespeare's painstaking calibration of character to time and place. The liberal critics at the NY Times will go gaga over this one!

'All the world's a stage'.......2007-08-22

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 Labour's 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, August 07

A Review? Simple. It's Beautiful!!.......2007-08-22

This movie is beautiful! That's right. That's my whole review.
There are stylised Komonos and rich 1890-ish Western costumes. A pallette of amazing reds, maroons and rose colors set against a magical green forest with ancient towering trees and exotic oriental marshes.
The romantic comedy element is all about being in love; being giddy with all consuming love. The Shakespearean words are edited short and crisp and are delivered naturalistically and effortlessly by the likes of Kevin Kline and Brian Blessed. Of the leads, David Oyelowo stands out as a very masculine and handsome leading man and Bryce Dallas Howard (an American) more that holds her own with the mostly British cast.
Perhaps due to Branagh's pruning of the text, I also found listening to, and understanding As You Like It just as effortless as the actor's delivery. I'm not an English teacher nor an Elizabethean scholar and this movie spoke to me, taking me on a wonderful escape. (NOTE: Make sure to watch all the way through the credits!)
It is obvious that Kenneth Branagh puts his whole soul into his movies. Thank you Kenneth!

Average customer rating:

Gorgeous sets, costumes, actors - but too many missing lines

As You Like It
Starring: Henry Ainley , Richard Ainley , Felix Aylmer , Elisabeth Bergner , and Lionel Braham
Director: Paul Czinner
Manufacturer: Alpha Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0001ZMX9A
Release Date: 2004-05-25

Customer Reviews:

Gorgeous sets, costumes, actors - but too many missing lines.......2004-10-08

"As You like It" Should be as light and lively as the recent version of "A Midsummer Nights Dream." Considering the age of the film, the sets and costumes are wonderful. Crowd scenes actually have a reasonable number of people. The production is movie - not stage play.

With that in mind, too much of the play is missing. Too many lines have been deleted, some for no reason. Often, the actors stand for a long silent shot, when the director easily could have had the missing line spoke in the same time. Many of the long passages are reduced to the first and last couple of lines. This hinders the character development and the pacing. It also makes the long speeches left, stand out to much, as if the director is saying "now wait, this part is important." Elisabeth Bergner as "Rosalind" is the worst offender. Many of her lnes are skipped, the worst of it is in the epilogue. Also missing - almost completely is act five.

The film transfer is okay, the sound is lacking high end compared to modern films. This may be due to the limitations of filming at the time. What was jarring, until I got use to it, was silence. When the actors aren't talking, there is no background - no music, no foley, just quiet. Something modern films should try once in a while.

As the only film of "As You Like It" on DVD, it will have to do until something better comes along. At the bargin price, it is a good film to fill the slot on the Shakesphere shelf. I lay in bed after watching it, trying to figure out who should play Rosalind in a new version. . .

Average customer rating:

As You Like It
Starring: Oliver Laurence
Manufacturer: Allied Artists Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0009UZGHS
Release Date: 2005-07-12

As You Like It By William Shakespeare with Laurence Olivier and Elisabeth Bergner

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As You Like It By William Shakespeare with Laurence Olivier and Elisabeth Bergner

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

ASIN: B000JIJJVE

Product Description

BONUS FEATURES: INTERACTIVE MENUS-SCENE ACCESS-BIOGRAPHY

Average customer rating:

Sir Laurence Olivier's first film
A Knowing Orlando Courts a Deranged Rosalind
Old-fashioned, but fun
Try the 1978 version with Helen Mirren
DVD is a big improvement

As You Like it
Starring: Henry Ainley , Felix Aylmer , Stuart Robertson , Leon Quartermaine , and Austin Trevor
Director: Paul Czinner
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 6305470332
Release Date: 1999-07-20

Description

The Bard's brilliant comedy with Sir Laurence Olivier in his first Shakespearian role. Elisabeth Bergner stars as Rosalind, the daughter of an exiled Duke, who falls in love with Orlando (Olivier), the son of one of her father's courtiers. When Orlando continues to ignore her, Rosalind decides the best way to be at his side is by disguising herself as a boy. Her deception works too well as Orlando would rather be in the boy's company than hers. How Rosalind works out her predicament is part of the fun in this early sound film adaptation of Shakespeare's classic play.

Customer Reviews:

Sir Laurence Olivier's first film .......2006-04-12

Elisabeth Bergner as Rosalind gets top billing in this 1936 B&W film. I love William Shakespeare. His mastery of language and plot is always (so far) a joy. When I bought this, I had just seen my son as Amiens, Lord Attending Exiled Duke, and the character of Rosalind played by a very pretty, perky and sassy young actress. After that performance, this DVD version was painful to watch and I never got through it. Sir Laurence is good, if not entirely believable as Orlando, but the film appears to be cast as a vehicle for Elisabeth Bergner though for the life of me I can't imagine why. Born in the Ukraine, and having first appeared in the Berlin silent film "Der Evangelimann" in 1923, Elisabeth Bergner acts like a silent actress, and "As You Like It" appears to be her first English-speaking role. Still, as Shakespeare goes, this is a funny and thoroughly enjoyable story with several clever twists. It's a Shakespeare play that cries out for Kenneth Branagh.

A Knowing Orlando Courts a Deranged Rosalind.......2005-01-31

A charming, if prudish, version of "As You Like It". In this adaptation, Celia is taller than Rosalind (abiding by Le Beau's lines in I, ii of the First Folio and disregarding Rosalind's line in I, iii about being "more than common tall" - which is cut here). Felix Ayimer is excellent as Duke Frederick but many other characters are marginalized as the script, reduced to about half its full length, focuses on Orlando and Rosalind. I miss some of the racy passages and rants of Jacques and Touchstone that have been excised. Elisabeth Bergner's performance is affected and histrionic but an interesting dynamic develops (whether intentionally or unintentionally) between her Ganymede and Olivier's Orlando. I suspect that Olivier's Orlando knows from the moment he meets Ganymede that he is, indeed, Rosalind. He plays it with such subtlety, though, as if the director wasn't in on the choice. Bergner's Rosalind seems to be mentally unstable, just a bit off. Olivier's Orlando is attracted to her capriciousness and exuberance. Overall, I enjoyed the film more than I enjoyed Sir Peter Hall's puzzling production (2005 at BAM) with his daughter Rebecca as Rosalind (she was the weak link in a superb cast). I viewed the film on VHS and the sound quality was awful. Maybe they improved it for the DVD.

Old-fashioned, but fun.......2002-06-05

This version of "As You Like It" has not aged well. The modern approach to Shakespeare, with more natural dialog and realistic costuming, has left the tight-wearing overly theatrical players of old looking a bit foolish. They strut around the stage with obvious gusto and verve, but they just never connect.

With that in mind, "As You Like It" can be fun. The play itself is a bit silly, and the actors even sillier. The director made no attempt to disguise the feminine status of Elizabeth Bergener. She remains a pretty girl in boys clothes with a screeching soprano voice. To his credit, Olivier plays it as straight as an oak, and never for a minute doubts her ill-conceived charade. Jacques is in full motley, making his presence in Arden forest even more absurd.

Lacking any other version on DVD, "As You Like It" contains a certain charm. Just be prepared. Your "willful suspension of disbelief" has never been so sorely tested.

Try the 1978 version with Helen Mirren.......2001-08-16

This is not a bad play, but it feels tight. I wanted to see it to compare with the 1978 version with Helen Mirren (just about impossible to find - try Ambrose Video and sit down for the price). The setting is forcefully lush, but feels plastic. My general view is that Shakespeare needs to be "slowed down", performance-wise and most old movies (40-50 years) seem rushed.

DVD is a big improvement.......2001-07-08

I have always enjoyed this movie even though the VHS version has very poor sound and picture quality. The DVD is much improved in both areas and is worth the additional investment (don't expect digital quality though). I love Olivier (young and handsome here) and considered him the star of this film, but the DVD keep box has about three "pages" of film history that set me straight. It explains that at the time this film was produced Elizabeth Bergener was the big star and Laurence Olivier a struggling young hopeful. Bergener insisted on him as Orlando. Her husband was the director of this and many other of her films. Also, I found her voice shrill, but hear it a bit differently now that I know that English is not her first language (she came to England as a fleeing Germany where she was already an international star). Fascinating stuff, a great film and good DVD quality.

Average customer rating:

As You Like It
Starring: Felix Aylmer , Henry Ainley , Leon Quartermaine , and Aubrey Mather
Director: Paul Czinner
Manufacturer: Corinth Films, Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

William Shakespeare's Classic Play
Starring Laurence Olivier

ASIN: B000VWLQR8

Product Description

There are a number of pluses to this film adaptation of William Shakespeares classic play. The early appearance of the young and brilliant Laurence Olivier in the role of Orlando is a harbinger of things to come with Oliviers consumate Henry V and Hamlet. Other actors who make this production great are Leon Quartermaine as Jacques, Henry Ainley as the banished Duke, Felix Aylmer as Duke Frederick, Peter Bull as William, and Aubrey Mather as Corin. The marvelous delivery of the Shakespearean verse is also worth mentioning, particularly Leon Quartermaines memorable rendition of the famous Seven Ages of Man, All the worlds a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.. and Henry Ainley delivering the classic lines, Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the Toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head, and this our life exempt from public haunt finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in every thing. I would not change it.

DVD:

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