REVIEW – FILM: Much Ado About Nothing (1993 Branagh)

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: Thoughts about Two Characters and the Plot of Kenneth Branagh’s film

((c)1993 David Lefkowitz.

BENEDICK & DOGBERRY

How does Kenneth Branagh, merrily thrusting his squat frame, pinched blue eyes, and pasty features into camera range at every opportunity, belie his roundish, slightly unformed features to create a commanding Benedick? By chiseling his face with a trim, flattering beard. By speaking with crunchingly precise diction. By taking Benedick from stentorian narcissism through childlike confusion to a nobility shaped by romantic love.  

At first we wonder if the one-note boorishness of Branagh’s Benedick could ever be worthy of Emma Thompson’s layered and wounded Beatrice. Branagh, who doesn’t work in layers but tackles each moment frontally and then shifts position as events dictate, gives us a Benedick who will never have Beatrice’s depth but will do just fine matching her at her highest points of rage, sorrow, and exultation.

Who knew that under all Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice make-up lay a game, if ultimately unconvincing, Dogberry? It’s really the same character with worse teeth, an Irish brogue modulating the growl, and a different sense of vanity – Beetlejuice prided himself on his grossly outrageous sorcery; Dogberry, bowing and scraping before royalty and pasting his hair down with spit, displays an exaggerated sense of personal honor.  Still, if Keaton’s comic business is resourceful enough to shake off his previous movie, it doesn’t quite stick to this one. Galloping in like a horseless refugee from “Monty Python And The Holy Grail,” Keaton’s Dogberry is just too weird for this sunny “Much Ado,” and after he cruelly head-butts a henchman, we wonder if this greasy gangleader made a wrong turn on the way to “Oliver!” 

PLOT: 

In comedy, when one character loves only himself and the other is convinced she can love no one at all, we know they’re both destined for each other. So do the townfolk of “Much Ado About Nothing,” who devise a simple ruse involving hearsay to push haughty Benedick and prickly Beatrice together. Things are not so simple for childlike Claudio and his Hero, whose wedding plans are shattered when the evil Don John launches his own scheme to dishonor Hero and thereby destroy Claudio. To the rescue gallops grubby entrepreneur and sycophant, Dogberry. His henchmen trap the villains, and romantic harmony is restored to the kingdom. 

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NOTES & BACKSTORY: 

[June 2023] I wrote this piece to fulfill an assignment when I was a critic fellow of the National Critics Institute of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT. Though nearly all our activities and homework dealt with live theater, we venture to the just-released “Much Ado” at the local movie theater. Rather than write a full review, our mentor that day (who might have been Dan Sullivan, or maybe it was Jay Novick) asked us to concentrate just on a couple of specific aspects of the movie—hence the disjointed format of the above three paragraphs.  

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