Hear Me Out: ‘Shakespeare in Love’ is the most overrated movie of the 1990s

For English literature and film lovers, as well as Hollywood executives, William Shakespeare has been the gift that keeps on giving, making ‘The Bard’ the single most heavily-adapted writer in history. However, there can easily be too much of a good thing.

The 1990s, especially toward the end of the decade, saw a boom in these adaptations. Some of the most well-known are Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night. In addition, whimsical and modernised takes on Shakespeare’s works like 10 Things I Hate About You also became hugely popular, but special scorn should be reserved for the Acadamy Award-winning romantic fantasy about his life, Shakespeare in Love.

For those who haven’t been subjected to it by their English teacher, the rom-com set in the late 16th century follows a young Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes) struggling with writer’s block while working on a play called Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter. He falls in love with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Viola de Lesseps, a noblewoman passionate about acting, even though women were forbidden from performing. Disguised as a man, Viola auditions for and lands a role in the play, and their love affair inspires him to transform the play into the iconic tragedy Romeo and Juliet.

The first few minutes of a film usually set the tone, look, and pace for the next two hours, which Shakespeare in Love accomplishes in the least interesting way possible thanks to flat cinematography and an unbearable frothiness that’s more reminiscent of a soap opera than a major Hollywood production.

In director John Madden and cinematographer Richard Greatrex’s defence, the miserly lighting might’ve been an attempt to replicate the lighting of a theatre, making the actors feel more like stage performers, especially in the opening scenes. Intentional or not, it ages the film compared to other films of the same year, whose cinematography magnificently stands out.

Was it really a deserving recipient of the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’ in 1999? Even at the best of times, no, but especially when it was competing directly with Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Somehow, Shakespeare in Love walked away with 13 nominations and seven wins, including ‘Best Actress’ for Paltrow.

Aside from all the controversies and undeserving accolades the film is wrapped in, the biggest issue lies in its portrayal of love; a theme Shakespeare himself explored with depth and care and one so popular in ’90s cinema. Titles like Ghost, Titanic, and Pretty Woman, to name a few, became some of the most iconic, beloved, and endlessly rewatchable romantic movies ever. Shakespeare in Love, meanwhile, slathers on the saccharine sentimentality so thick and forcefully that it’s overpowering.

Shakespeare in Love doesn’t come close to any of those aforementioned favourites in painting a realistic and engaging portrayal of what it means to not only be in love but find it to begin with. First, because it doesn’t present a real emotional challenge; it’s just a series of well-told, well-written events. Second, after watching it, it feels like the audience has been told to see love rather than being invited to feel it. Filmmaking is at its most powerful when it makes you feel the strongest emotions in life, and the movie resolutely fails to deliver on that front.

People might say they like the film, but it’s doubtful that anyone has ever been truly swept away by it. History will always remember Shakespeare in Love as a ‘Best Picture’ winner, but history will always remember it as perhaps the single least-deserving winner in the ceremony’s long and storied existence. It was a flash in the pan, an anomaly, a cinematic aberration, and by far the decade’s most overrated picture.

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