I’ve often considered Shakespeare to be the most overrated writer of all time and I’m afraid that this film did not change my mind on that. The writing style just doesn’t really work as the old time English get tiring rather quickly. All the witty banter is a little too forced with none of the conversations actually sounding natural. The movie can make for some ironic amusement but that’s about all that you’re getting out of this adventure which quickly overstays its welcome.

The film starts with Pedro, Benedick, Claudio, and John riding into a small town. They have arrived after glorious conquest and look forward to being treated like royalty. After all….that is precisely what they are. Claudio falls for a girl named Hero and they quickly get ready to be married. Benedick is mad about this because he thought that Claudio would be an eternal bachelor like himself. So the guys get together to set up Benedick with Beatrice who always mocks him. The two of them have been verbally sparring for a long while but perhaps this can turn into romance. What they don’t realize is that John aims to end these romances. He wants to cause a lot of chaos and is ruthless in his approach. Will he be able to so easily tear these alliances apart?

Of course the whole film’s premise is based on the fact that he can which shows just how weak these romances are. Lets start with Claudio and Hero here. Basically John shows “Hero” cheating on Claudio with someone else. Unfortunately Claudio could not tell that this wasn’t the real Hero. I think that’s pretty rough in itself since you should clearly know what your girlfriend looks like. If it was so dark that you could not see clearly at all, then you either rush to the door and ask for Hero or ask her the next day. Being completely tricked is certainly the worst out of all the options here.

Claudio naturally throws a big fuss about it but what’s worse is that he doesn’t give Hero a chance to talk at all. He just storms away and destroys her reputation which seemingly causes her to die. Then as an apology he prepares to marry a relative of hers. That’s already a rebound but it’s also a terrible apology in general. There was no saving Claudio at this point and honestly the whole thing isn’t a great look for Hero either. At that point if this is how Claudio is going to act, she should have just moved on. Not just giving up or being passive and seeing how the situation was going.

Beatrice had more of a real reaction as she wanted to murder Claudio and convinced Benedick to do it on her behalf. I appreciate that from a family standpoint but of course on a romance one it did end up hurting the ship. It showed after all that she was only with Benedick by this point so that she could manipulate him and the love itself felt very weak at best. I much preferred when they were just bantering with each other. To so easily be manipulated into liking each other by the supporting cast makes them all look like deeply unserious characters. It’s as if they were so pleased at the other being secretly in love that they were willing to overlook everything else.

John gets more credit here because as a villain he was actually fairly effective. It didn’t take long for him to infiltrate the ranks and really split everyone up. Ultimately once the heroes turned on him the guy didn’t put up much of a fight but he still kept them all on the back foot. Pedro was a decent commander but also someone who was easily fooled and got very emotional. In general I guess you could say all of the characters were driven too strongly by their emotions.

Like I mentioned before, the way they all talk gets old really quickly too. I get how it feels really dramatic and all but the old English takes forever to get through. You’re basically begging the characters to get to the point of their speech instead of taking forever. You also have the subplot with the guards who have no idea what is going on and their scenes really tend to drag. It goes from potentially being funny to you just rolling your eyes by the end because you know that it’s just not going to end.

The film could have really done well to be about 30 minutes shorter but that still wouldn’t have saved it. The movie doesn’t help itself with a super rough opening either as all the women in the village get ready to meet the men and look desperate in the moment. The fanservice was bad enough but do they really have to go so all out for these guys? Desperation is not really going to be a super attractive trait here and it’s another one of those old time dynamics that just doesn’t work. If you’re desperate for any guy to pick you, then there’s nothing really romantic about that. By the end of the film you are supposed to feel happy for the two couples and yet you can’t help but feel like they won’t really have a happy ever after.

Overall, This film absolutely needed some big time action. It needed the characters to get some real fight scenes and for the individual characters to also not be so weak. You’ll see various characters pinned to the wall and threatened while they can barely react in retaliation. None of them really have a whole lot of honor left by the end as they get thrown into every conflict. They also aren’t interesting enough to hold their own stories. I dare say this kind of film would only work as a parody because it feels like one for a while until you realize just how seriously the characters are taking themselves. A romance film without any understanding of what a true romance is will always be doomed to fail.

Overall 3/10