Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing

I enjoyed watching Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. I visualized a lot of the play fairly differently than what was shown on screen, however, I felt most of the imagery still worked cohesively with the original work. Starting with characters, I really enjoyed Branagh as Benedick. I thought that he did an excellent job of staying true to Shakespearan Benedick’s comedic style. One of my favorite scenes–which I think many people can echo–was the Prince and his entourage tricking Benedick. Branagh is brilliant in this scene; his performance is hilarious, but also completely unaware of itself which allows the audience to stay fully immersed in it. Beatrice was also fantastic, however, I did not see an Emma Thompson-esque person

Something of an older-sister-like figure. I did not enjoy her tricking scene as much. I feel like there could have been just a bit more screen time/attention put towards it. It just did not seem as thought out as Benedick’s. I thought the casting choices for the roles of Claudio and Hero were very well done. I didn’t “see” in my head all of the PDA between Claudio and Hero, but it did a lot for their in-film characterization and definitely made the wedding scene all the more shocking. As far as the Princes go, I really, really liked Denzel Washington’s performance. As with many of these characters, I didn’t originally see the Prince as Denzel Washington, but, he does a great job of being the slightly naive, clearly well intentioned Prince. I have to confess, I did not really enjoy Keanu Reeves’ performance as Don John. I felt that he was far too dramatic, although that could be an acting choice to show the ridiculousness of the character. Even if that is the case, a performance shouldn’t remove the viewer from the show. I think the film lost out on that. Despite this, I really enjoyed Dogberry and Verges’