Shakespeare in Love

The first time I watched this, I was in my mid-20's. I had always avoided it because it didn't look like my kind of movie, but it was one of my then-fiancee's (now wife's) favorite movies of the time. I sat through it, although it would be more accurate to say, at that age, I suffered through it, and blocked it out of memory. Time only made me hate it more, due to the shady and frankly should-be-against-the-rules campaign that won it Best Picture. When the wife and I began our Best Picture winner watch-quest, this was the only movie I had seen prior of which I had seen before but hadn't seen in a very long time. Every other previously-seen movie I'd either watched a number of times, or had vivid memories of. This was a black hole. So when she suggested watching it, I said why not. Good time to give it a re-appraisal with an older, more open mind. It turns out it wasn't the smoking dumpster fire I remembered it. It's also nothing special, and still is absolutely undeserving of its award. It's not the most undeserving (Annie Hall, your place at the bottom of the ranking will never be challenged, of this I am sure), but if it was honored more than it deserved, it is also hated more than it deserved. It is, really, a quintessential 90's romantic movie. The acting, the editing, the cast, the style, the presentation, all of it just screams 90's. That's both a blessing and a curse (duality, it seems, is both a theme in the movie, and for the movie itself); there's a certain charm to being so 90's coded. A cool, disaffected slickness to it all. It doesn't care about historical accuracy, it frequently lapses into modern turns of phrase and does not care if you care, it has anachronistic jokes like the coffee mug from Stratford-upon-Avon and showcases them gleefully ... it is a rom-com that gleefully and proudly shows its 90's 'tude. It even follows the 90's romantic movie trend of "leading lady must be naked a lot", something that, in hindsight, feels cynical and cheap, a way to give the guys a "reward" for sitting through a "chick movie". But it is also so slick and cool, it never earns the emotional depth it's trying to portray. Will and Viola never feel as in love as the movie wants us to believe they are, no matter how often they tear at each other like teenagers who've just discovered how do have sex. Weirder still is how SiL is beholden to rom-com tropes, but does nothing with them. There's the big third-act deception reveal that Will has a wife back in Stratford, and the movie does nothing with it other than a "dude, why didn't you tell me?" look. The guy Viola is forcibly engaged to is a predictable jackass that is somehow both noble-born and poor as a beggar, and yet has clothing and a stagecoach and all the finery of the times that would be way out of his league. He and Will naturally square off at one point, but rather than having that end with the bad guy skulking off in shame, nothing of consequence happens. The theater Will is staging his latest play in gets shut down, but the owner of a rival theater -- whom Will conned out of money at the beginning -- shrugs off the rivalry and has Will produce his play there. And the bet between Will and Viola's intended amounts to nothing but a modest monetary sum. No "if I win, you leave her" stakes, no using it to advance anything substantial. Also, and this may be unpopular to fans of the movie ... Romeo & Juliet should not have been the play he was inspired to write over the course of the movie. It should've been the play he wrote BECAUSE OF THE EVENTS OF THE MOVIE. He gets his heart broken, his beloved is whisked away with an abusive jerk to another continent, and he's inspired to write a comedy?!? It just doesn't work for me. I am glad I got to re-appraise this. My original score of 1 star was unfair, born out of a younger, and far less tolerant, man's mind, and embittered over the years by the negative publicity around how it won its accolades. It is a perfectly fine movie, neither terrible to amazing. But it is by no means a deserving winner, or even a deserving nominee. It is your average 90's rom-com.