A group of peasant actors, including the blustering Nick Bottom (Kevin Kline), and four mixed-up lovers (Anna Friel, Calista Flockhart, Dominic West, Christian Bale) end up as pawns in a fight between faerie royalty (Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett) on midsummer night.
Lust. Lots and lots of lust. That’s what A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about. That and low comedy. It isn’t tricky to put on a successful production. Just make the faeries bold and sexy, the lovers foolish and sexy, and the acting troop ridiculous and crude. That’s it. It’s hard to fail. But director Michael Hoffman fails by missing all of those. He starts off well with casting a group of extremely attractive people: Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Calista Flockhart, Dominic West, Christian Bale, Anna Friel, and Sophie Marceau. They sure have the basic material to be sexy. And the setting is lush and ripe. But that’s all he gets right, falling into the “proper Shakespeare” trap. Hoffman removes all the passion and cleans up the humor to the point that only a scholastic nun could be happy. There are scenes where you might smile, but you should be falling out of your chair. It doesn’t help that he has hacked the play apart, cutting out a substantial portion of the faerie dialog. He also moves the story to 19th century Tuscany, apparently in the belief that modern audiences would be unfamiliar with ancient Athens, but find the dawning age of bicycles in Northern Italy to be old hat. It does no real harm, but it also serves no purpose. That’s how I felt about the entire film: no harm, but no purpose. Lord, what fools these directors be.