Much Ado

[pen_grunt]

In my perpetually fucked sleep schedule I've been watching quite a few things. I'm almost done with Queer as Folk (boy, is that EVER dated and kinda-preachy now), Julia Child is a fallback.

I just watched Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing. Now I've seen a TON of variations on Much Ado (seriously, I've seen a lot of this play...there are parts I could probably recite by memory), but I was all excited for this. Because: Joss Whedon doing movies in his house with friends.

It was decent. The parts that lag are always the parts that lag (Dear Shakespeare, no one cares about your comic relief guardsmen). I can never quite buy Alexis Denisof as a lead; as much as I like him he'll always be a bumbling sort of Wesley (Buffy). Nathan Fillion has gotten sort of puffy-looking since Firefly. Sean Maher, it must be said, is a MUCH better Don John than Keanu Reeves was in Kenneth Branagh's version of Much Ado. Not that that's hard to do.

Don John is a weird character anyway. He's an agent of chaos, but truly he has about zero motivation to be a dick. And yet. The whole story is dependent on his dickishness, ergo he is a dick. It's a frustrating thing: Why is Don John such a dick to everyone? REASONS!

Comments

[sacramentalist.livejournal.com]

As a bastard, he's a victim of society.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I find Shakespeare just does this sometimes. He needs a bad guys so: Bad Guy Because Reasons. Even though pretty much everyone in Much Ado treats Don John well, he seems to have a good relationship with his brother and friends, and he even has his own entourage. But: Bastard... so Bad Guy.

[tediousandbrief.livejournal.com]

True. Look at Iago. There are people still arguing about why he's such a bastard.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

I always gathered that Iago was just racist--that's why he had it out for Othello. He doesn't really do anything bad to anyone ELSE in the play (well, with the exception of Desdemona, natch).

[tediousandbrief.livejournal.com]

I've never been sure if it was racism or just being an ass. Granted, it also has been over a decade since I read the play.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

It's not entirely clear whether HE's just racist, or he manipulates everyone else's racism to his advantage. A case could be made for both, but he's an ass either way.

Shakespeare does have a high level of mustache-twirling-villianry, all around.

[tediousandbrief.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to seeing this, but am kinda curious. I've never been able to think of Denison as anything other than Wesley or his character from HIMYM.