Dueling wits

I’m a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but not so much of Joss Whedon’s other work, so I wasn’t sure how I’d react to his home movie version of Much Ado About Nothing (2013, MC-78, NFX) but it turned out a delight.  Joss makes a practice of inviting friends over his Santa Monica house for readings of Shakespeare, and after the rigors of his superhero blockbuster The Avengers, he gathered them at his home for twelve days and turned out this lively contemporary adaptation in lustrous black & white.  The cast does a good job of rendering the dialogue in surprisingly demotic fashion.  Amy Acker is excellent as Beatrice, and Alexis Denisof (of Buffy) pairs nicely as Benedict, trading barbs until they can acknowledge their mutual attraction.  Whedon regular Nathan Fillion makes an offbeat but effective Dogberry, the comical constable.  The rest of the cast does a good job of keeping up.  It’s dashed off, but not slapdash, and reinforces Whedon as a filmmaker to watch.

I thought it would be fun to take another look at Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 version of Much Ado About Nothing  (NFX), with him as Benedict and Emma Thompson as Beatrice, and while remaining enjoyable, it has easily as many flaws and gaps.  The leads are fine, and Denzel Washington holds his own, Kate Beckinsale is lovely, but Michael Keaton’s Dogberry is much broader and less effective, Keanu Reeves makes a stolid villain, and Robert Sean Leonard simply doesn’t have it.  The Tuscan villa setting is striking, but not so much all the scurrying and scampering of the company around it.  Gotta love Emma, however, and she brought out the best in Kenneth for a while.