List Price: $26.98You Pay Only: $20.99 You Save: $5.99 (22%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0026359401923
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Hbo Home Video
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 25, 2007
Running Time: 127 minutes
Sales Rank: 5747
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Editorial Review:
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!
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Folks, there's no such thing as a "gimmick" for Shakespeare...
A point that might apply to every Shakespearean adaptation or appropriation reviewed here at Amazon.com: there is no such thing as "traditional Shakespeare," or "conceptual Shakespeare," or anything else. Shakespeare's plays never had a chance to develop a "tradition." They had their original performance conditions, and then saw immediate alteration and adaptation by the Restoration. Nahum Tate's "happy ending" King Lear, in which Lear lives and Cordelia marries Edgar, held the stage for 150 years. End of story. Tights and codpiece Shakespeare is a late-nineteenth, early and beyond twentieth-century fetish that is just as much of a "gimmick" or "concept" as, say, The Tempest on Mars. Please stop writing things like "I'm a traditionalist, so...." That invariably means, "I like pretty costumes that are vaguely Renaissance-y and actors speaking in RP in such a way as to invoke a Victorian or Edwardian construct of what Shakespeare might have looked like a long time ago but never really did."
As for As You Like It: for me, it ISN'T (and not because of the Japan "gimmick," which "works" as well as anything KB has done, and worked just as brilliantly for an RSC Coriolanus back in 2002.
Rating:  - Interesting
It is a very interesting movie. The movie is good if your looking for something that uses the actual play. Great for school stuff.
Rating: - Functional
Easy on the eye with nice photography and art direction. Strong performances by Blessed and Molina. The Rosalind by Bryce Howard is very pleasant if a bit giggly. Stunning work by Adrian Lester as Oliver De Boys. Would show this version over others in school as the Olivier 1936 version's audio is too difficult and the 1978 BBC production is rather plodding.
Rating:  - A movie that proves "all the world's a stage"
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This movie is based on William Shakespeare's romantic comedy play "As You Like It" (circa 1600), one of his greatest comedies.
I feel that this movie catches the essence of the play with director Kenneth Branagh (who also adapted the play to the screen and co-produced) focusing on the main love plot with the other love plots being given some attention. (Branagh had to do this or the movie would be far too long.)
What is the essence of the play and the movie? The essence is to create a situation where everything is real and unreal, false and genuine at the same time. This all occurs in the Forest of Arden where time moves slowly and where the main action of the play and movie takes place.
Who are the main characters in the play and movie? They are as follows:
(1) Duke Senior (Brian Blessed), living in exile in the Forest of Arden.
(2) Frederick (again, Brian Blessed), the duke's younger brother and usurper of the duke's dominions, "of rough and envious disposition."
(3) Orlando (played by black actor David Oyelowo), youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys, "never school'd, and yet learn'd; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved."
(4) Oliver (played by black actor Adrian Lester), Orlando's wicked elder brother.
(5) Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard), the beautiful witty daughter of the banished Duke. "There is a pretty redness in [her] lip, a little riper and more lusty red than that mix'd in ... Read More
Rating:  - Takes some getting-used-to, but enjoyable in the end.
Usually, I prefer my opera or play set in traditional production, with the time frame, costumes and cast as plausible and realistic as possible. This movie is therefore a disappointment to me at the very beginning, with the background set to 19 century Japan and the de Boys brothers played by black actors. Director Kenneth Branagh's leisurely pacing does not help.
Strangely, as the story goes on and the action moves away from the Japanese "court" to the forest, I find myself gradually swayed by the excellent performance of every actor in the movie and begin to truly enjoy some of the best dialogues from Shakespeare.
Branagh really does a good job bringing the best out of his talented cast. It is obvious that they are all having a fun time. But the most attention getting has to be the two leading ladies. Bryce Dallas Howard's lips and Romola Garai's eyes are so lively and exuberant, one wonders how anyone can top their performance. Amazingly, the answer to that question is also right there on the screen. Kevin Kline's Jaques is subtle, true and touching at the same time. Just seeing him read "All the world's a stage..." is worth the price of the DVD already.
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