Summary 
Lushly designed and gracefully filmed modernization hearkens back to 1930s screwball romantic comedies and musicals. Heavily edited and shortened to just over ninety minutes with clever black-and-white old-time cinema newsreels to identify characters and fill in the story lines. Some awkward low comedy, but for the most part a charming film laced with superlative dancing and singing, and some ingenious improvements, like the awkward masque scene replaced with a stunningly sexy red-light tango sequence, and instead of the execrable Nine Worthies presentation, Nathan Lane leads a show-stopping "There's No Business Like Show Business."
Production
Directed by Kenneth Branagh, released in 2000. 1:33.
Cast
Alessandro Nivola (King Ferdinand), Alicia Silverstone (Princess), Natascha McElhone (Rosaline), Kenneth Branagh (Berowne), Carmen Ejogo (Maria), Matthew Lillard (Longaville), Adrian Lester (Dumaine), Emily Mortimer (Katherine), Nathan Lane (Costard), Timothy Spall (Don Armado), Richard Clifford (Boyet).
Analysis
Kenneth Branagh's lushly designed and gracefully filmed modernization of Love's Labour's Lost hearkens back to 1930s screwball romantic comedies and musicals, updating to a carefree European spirit at the dawn of World War Two. Branagh cuts Shakespeare's comedy considerably, shortening the film to just over ninety minutes by excising great chunks of text and by inserting clever black-and-white old-time cinema newsreels to identify characters and fill in the story lines. The Cinetone newsreels are jerky and fast-moving clips with spots and skips as if truly projected from a reel, and campy narration describes the King of Navarre and his friends' scholarly endeavors: "it's a tall order, by golly!" Branagh modernizes to mid-1939 Europe - "there's more to life than guns and warfare" - with the celebrity-style male characters shown in military maneuvers but casting off their uniforms for study: Bad Boy Berowne, The King, The Duke Domaine, and Lucky Longaville. The newsreel narrator sets the tongue-in-cheek tone, describing how Navarre's dashing King has permitted a single exception (Holofernia, his principal tutor) to his exclusion of women from the royal court.
Branagh then cuts to a solemn 1.1 moment in a wood-paneled library, as Navarre and his fellows gather in white shirts and black robes to formalize their oaths - "the mind shall banquet, though the body pine" - despite Berowne's shifty-eyed reluctance. Branagh himself portrays Berowne, the not-so-young men color-coded by the sashes around their waists, and they all cross their arms and lean backward against a large desk. Branagh's Berowne, with cheerful exuberance, doffs his robe and begins some dance moves, shuffling across the library to leap atop a chair - "you're a fella who's got his brains in his dancing shoes" - and in a moment he is joined by the others in a jaunty Charleston, all four singing and dancing, replete with hand claps, hops on one foot, spins and kick moves, then a concluding knee slide to the King. The delightful song-and-dance sequence is one of many in Branagh's film, captured with effortless ease by a sliding camera that pans with fluid grace. After accounting for the visit from the Princess of France and her all-female entourage - "this was quite forgot!" - Berowne and the boys gather in a sports-huddle and slap their hands atop one another's.
Branagh presents the women of Navarre - led by the pixieish Alicia Silverstone as the Princess and the regally beautiful Natascha McElhone as Rosaline - in a memorable 2.1 image, with each of the gowned ladies sliding along the river in their own rowed skiff, all four vessels fitted with a pair of bright floodlights aft. Boyet rides a bicycle on the foggy shore beside them, and they, like the men, are color-coded by their jackets and flowing skirts, the color - blue, green, orange, red - matching that of their lover in Navarre's court. Branagh wisely inverts the ladies' appearance with the 2.1 intro of Don Armado, lending the Princess more significance. The ladies giggle and sigh, the Princess reading about the "vow-fellows" in a newspaper before they arrive to be greeted with the puppy-dog expressions of the men. After Boyet is bombarded with questions about the ladies - the boys in turn bringing him a cocktail, a loaf of bread, and a cigarette as favors - Branagh cuts to a swing tune and elegant dance in the courtyard - "I won't dance, don't ask me" - with moves up and down a long stone staircase before an exchange of color-coded corsages as the girls race off giggling.
The low humor of the townspeople does not fare nearly as well - a little too corny, and way too stilted - despite Nathan Lane's presence as a traveling magician Costard. After another Cinetone newsreel introduces the characters, Branagh moves back to 1.2 and Lane's Costard ("from Broadway to Baden Baden!") and his brief trial. Lane's mustached rascal sports a hat and bow-tie with a fur-collared coat, pulls multi-colored handkerchiefs from his pocket, and punctuates his verbal volleys with finger snaps, horn honks and whistle blows. Timothy Spall's absurd Don Armado, in handle-bar mustache and impenetrable accent, seems to be in a different film altogether, his over-the-top knee-to-the-crotch hamminess at times excruciating, especially in comparison to the graceful charm of all the song-and-dance routines. Spall's Armado first appears with the busty Jaquenetta, a paper bag over her head, and he bows so deeply his toupee flips over.
After a brief image of the men listening to news-radio reports of the imminent world war but thinking of the lovely women, Branagh cuts to Armado 3.1 in an over-exaggerated strut - "I am in love" - shadowed by Moth, that segues into an "I Get a Kick Out of You" montage of Armado imagining his life with Jaquenetta. Spall's Armado paces in a blue robe, with quick cuts to him smoking a cigar and popping a champagne cork, dallying in a fencing match with Jaquenetta then head-butting her, then flying a two-seater airplane into a barrel roll that flips Moth out into the sky. Armado kicks aside a background moon, then catches the falling Moth in his arms, an entertaining if painfully silly sequence that pales in comparison to Branagh's subsequent scene, an overhead shot of the ladies fanned out in their color-coded sleeping bags as if the petals of a multi-colored flower. The Princess and her ladies wear hair-curlers - color-coded, of course - as they hug teddy bears in their canvas tent just beyond Navarre's court. Branagh then cuts to a thoroughly charming, razzle-dazzle synchronized swim routine from the ladies in gold bathing suits and caps, a stunningly precise sequence that recalls the underwater swim-dancing in Busby Berkeley musicals during the 1930s.
The middle portion of Branagh's film sags briefly, with Lane's Costard doing his best to enliven the 4.1 love letter scenes by talking to Branagh's Berowne with a hand puppet and resting his head on his shoulder, then interrupting the ladies' colorful croquet game by dramatically announcing, "I have...a letter," but pulling from his pocket a yellow rubber chicken. After Don Armado crawls on his belly after the strutting Jaquenetta, the female college professor version of Holofernes, in mortar board and prim wire-rimmed spectacles, sings "The Way You Look Tonight" 4.2 while dancing in a park with Nathaniel. 4.3 begins a bit awkwardly, with Branagh's Berowne watching a group of sheep from a high library window - one inexplicably falls over dead - then hiding behind a railed bookcase ladder and shrieking like one of the Three Stooges when the King flings his hat to send the ladder spinning on its rails across the bookshelves.
The good-natured comedy plays well, perhaps the most amusing scenes in the entire film: the King removes his black robe and whoops across the library floor, before erupting into song - "I fell...and it was swell" - then scrambling beneath a study table to hide behind an absurdly small potted plant when Longaville arrives; Longaville takes off his mortar board and admires a photograph of Maria concealed within it, lying back on the table and singing while carnally thrusting his hips, before he rushes for cover behind a giant stuffed bear as Dumaine enters; Adrian Lester's lithe Dumaine exhibits the finest dancing skills of the ensemble, singing "I've got a crush on you" as he kicks over a chair, dons a hat, then walks gracefully over the top of another pair of chairs, before twirling across the library, performing handstands atop the table, then doing the splits and cartwheeling off. The ensuing mock-accusatory confrontations ("I should blush!") conclude with Berowne's appearance from above - the King falls backward in a swoon, and is caught by the others, who fan his face like the Three Stooges in a 1930s comedy short - and Branagh's deliciously wounded words: "I . . . betrayed by you." His friends of course catch on to the significance of his love letter, as Branagh's Berowne suddenly whimpers and tries to eat the paper; they stuff him into the arms of the grizzly bear until he relents ("I confess!"). The scene continues to improve into the film's finest moments, as Branagh's Berowne leaps atop the table to wax eloquently about love - "when love speaks the voice of all the gods make heaven drowsy with the harmony" - while the men tap-dance the two-beat rhythm. Branagh's Berowne, at one point posed just like the stuffed bear next to him ("love, first learned in a lady's eyes"), rambles and implores, his acting chops clearly the finest among the ensemble, until he quite unexpectedly lifts straight into the air as if weightless. The other three follow, ascending into the azure-domed background of "Heaven," singing until Branagh cuts to them, now wearing black tuxedoes, dancing exuberantly with their ladies - "when we're out together dancing cheek to cheek" - twirling across a courtyard strewn with red leaves fallen from autumnal trees. All eight performers do their own singing and dancing for the film, and their grace and energy is remarkable and a delight to behold.
Branagh races the story forward into the lengthy 5.2, moving quickly from another black-and-white newsreel - "where have all the students gone?" - to Holofernia smoking a pipe while Moth plays the piano, then to the Princess and her retinue - in color-coded gowns with matching flowers in their hair - exclaiming over their love tokens as Branagh's graceful camera circles. They decide to exchange favors to trick their suitors - "we are wise girls to mock our lovers so" - and Branagh cleverly replaces the typically sluggish masque with a sexy tango scene, the scantily clad dancers all masked and drenched in red light - "let's face the music and dance" - as they caress and grope their partners, their heads thrown back in orgasmic expressions. Branagh cuts quickly, in time to the music, before panning back for a broader shot then cutting to the ladies, all smoking as if post-coitus at a lounge bar, exulting in their deceit. They shriek when the men approach, Silverstone's coy Princess leading them to the river bank to dangle their feet in the water, and the men brace themselves with shots at the bar before removing socks and shoes and rolling up their pants to sit and endure, bare feet in the water, as they are laughed at: "we are shame-proof, my lord." The scene effectively concludes the dialogue in Branagh's heavily edited version of the play, with the remainder of the film almost all newsreels and song-and-dance.
After a newsreel - "the grim events of the outside world" - that describes the now-public couples ("they're in the love business!"), Branagh follows with another ingenious cut, replacing the difficult Nine Worthies presentation, always a rather awkward celebratory spectacle, with "There's No Business Like Show Business." Lane's Costard slides down the stairwell banister in a spotlight, singing slowly and moving to a white-wigged orchestra that plays behind him. The clownish townspeople serve as backup vocalists rather than as Nine Worthies performers, and the song becomes a lavish Broadway-style Night of the Stars dance, shot from above amid swirling spotlights as everyone joins in. Lane's Costard leads the way, arms up, running in place, finishing big to wild applause as the mood suddenly halts - and the film takes a dramatic turn - with the arrival of the black-haired and goateed messenger Mercade with news about the King of France. "Dead," Silverstone's Princess says, to complete his sentence. As Branagh's Berowne notices, "the scene begins to cloud," and the always-graceful camera circles as the ladies resolutely march away, each caught for a private moment by their suddenly somber and soft-spoken suitor. The words are tender and romantic - "my heart is in thy breast" - the promises mature and resolute, and after Berowne kisses McElhone's Rosaline with passion, he is handed a newspaper with the headline "Poland Invaded" as a plaintive piano plays softly.
Branagh presents the final goodbyes with an homage to Casablanca, as each man sings of his love to his lady - "though by tomorrow you're gone" - with wise gratitude: "they can't take that away from me." They arrive in cars at an airfield, and the men, wearing hats and raincoats like Humphrey Bogart, wave their goodbyes amid thick white rolls of fog. The ladies' airplane passes away, skywriting, "you that way, we this way." Branagh concludes with a final Cinetone newsreel, rapid images of bombs exploding and city buildings falling. Berowne is depicted as a foot soldier in a tent, Costard as on the run, the Princess under arrest by the Nazis, and Armado and Moth languishing behind the barbed wire of a prison camp. As the popping newsreel continues, the tide of the war turns, with Longaville and Dumaine shown within the cockpit of a bomber plane, then the cheering crowds at victory parades, as triumphant soldiers return to warm embraces. The newsreel reveals all four couples happily reunited, and Branagh concludes with a happy ending, changing the final image of the eight smiling lovers from grainy black-and-white to vibrant color in a satisfyingly heart-warming conclusion to a charming 1930-style song-and-dance entertainment.