- Location: The Grand Cinema
- Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world (and certainly the only person on the internet) to consider himself an agnostic on the subject of Joss Whedon. I've caught a few episodes of Buffy and Angel over the years and felt compelled neither to seek out more nor to flee the room. Firefly is admittedly a dramatic improvement over the old TV show The Wild, Wild West, but it's taken me a few years to get even halfway through its meager 14-episode run. In my book, Whedon's mega-blockbuster The Avengers was exactly the cinematic equivalent of an epic crossover comic book event, with all the good and bad qualities that statement implies. Thus, it was with relatively little enthusiasm that I approached Whedon's newest project, a modernized adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. Sure, Shakespeare's source material was a sure thing, but was Whedon going to contribute anything I hadn't seen before?
- Surprisingly, I was pleased to discover that the answer to that question was mostly "no." Honestly, there is nothing terribly revolutionary about Whedon's film, except that it is an extremely simple, faithful, and well-staged version of one of the world's great comedies. In this case, that a director known for his teen vampire television and twee geekiness released such a film in the midst of the summer blockbuster season is itself the novelty. The casting is excellent, featuring an appropriately pompous Benedick (Alexis Denisof), a pleasantly quarrelsome Beatrice (Amy Acker), an amusingly confounding Dogberry (Nathan Fillion), and a whole host of talented supporting actors, including Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Fran Kranz, Jillian Morgese, and Sean Maher. The screenplay trims the play in all the right places (it's a Shakespeare wedding comedy, so I won't even bother summarizing the plot), and the production is as bare-bones as one can imagine, set in Whedon's own palatial home and filmed in handheld black-and-white. At times, one regrets the lack of color, especially in the film's many outdoor scenes, but I can accept that this project was intended to be minimalist in the extreme. Above all, one gets the clear impression that Whedon and his entire crew had a blast making this film. If only the production companies would let him make the next Avengers movie this way, perhaps I'd become a true believer. For now, I'll just be content if he does more enjoyable Shakespeare adaptions.
