One of my all time favorites.

best movie i've ever seen.

Absolutely Brilliant!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Kenneth Branagh is attempting yet another Shakespeare play. This time he's adapting it as a 1930 era musical. The King of Navarre and his three companions swear a very public oath to study together and to renounce women for three years. Their honor is immediately put to the test by the arrival of the Princess of France and her three lovely companions. This one stars Alessandro Nivola, Alicia Silverstone, Natascha McElhone, Matthew Lillard, Emily Mortimer among others.I'm fine with a musical. It's not my favorite genre but I won't hold it against this movie. However, everybody is playing it so broad. At times, they act like it's a parody of a 30s musical. It was ridiculously annoying. The second problem I had was the story. Here we have a story about powerful kings and princess. But it takes place in 1930s when royalty have only nominal powers. It makes no sense. Again it's really annoying. The stagecraft is good but there's no way I can recommend this to anybody other than musical lovers.

I love Shakespeare. I really do. I also am also a huge fan of Kenneth Branagh. His Henry V, Hamlet, Much Ado About You, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night are all excellent. I feel the problem here is that he tried far too hard to make Shakespeare marketable. I love musicals, especially old ones, as well, but I find something lacking in the combination. And, as much as I adore Kenneth, he cannot dance. This is not Shakespeare's best comedy in the first place, but even Branagh's ambition couldn't save this disaster. The ending is happier than the play's cliffhanger-like promises, which I like. That is about all I like.

I found Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labors Lost to be delightful. There are those who approach the Bard with religious awe and will be scandalized by how much of the original script has been truncated here and replaced by singing. And there will be those hate or adore Branagh and cannot view this movie without comparing it to others of his movies. And there will be those who love musicals and are bewildered at performances by the usually unsung and flatfooted. But taken on its own merits, it's a fun, farcical, giddy, touching, beautiful, musical romp. In its spirit, it reminded me of "A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" but with a simpler plot and more beautiful imagery and language.As others have commented here, Love's Labors Lost is not Shakespeare's best, but there are some gems of language and an amusing, though fairly simple, plot. Branagh did just the right editing of some of the more tedious or dated wordplay and set the action in a romantic Navarre surrounded by the very real dangers of a European conflagration. I couldn't help but imagine Shakespeare delighting in the light elegance and witty turns of phrase in the Cole Porter and Gershwin music... exactly the spirit of the original and a good match for the plot but adapted to modern sensibilities. I enjoyed the singing and dancing by actors who don't routinely do this sort of work; it added to the naturalness and effervescence of the performances. On the whole, it's not dazzling musical fare, but its perfectly enjoyable, almost a musical parody of musicals. And the clowning was just ridiculous in the best sense of the word, and often slapstick.In short, it's not a conservative adaptation of Shakespeare, it's not a Broadway extravaganza, it doesn't have deep or complex character development or conflict. It's an unusual and well done movie. And it's just fun. Enjoy!

This odd production of Shakespeare's 2nd-rate comedy is not bad with its admixture of various old standard song-and-dance numbers from American musical comedies by Kern, the Gershwins and Irving Berlin as well as real and not so real newsreel clips from World War 2. That it doesn't really make sense is balanced by the fact that it has the courage of its anachronisms and doesn't try to do so.The song-and-dance numbers are mostly only tenuously connected to the action of the play but this is part of the film's charm. Though I wonder why Nathan Lane is channeling Ethel Merman in the song from Berlin's "Annie Get your Gun", "There's no Business Like Show Business" but, never mind, it works well enough.I only feel that after a while I have gotten the joke and wish it would soon end.And while only Kenneth Branagh is really a Shakespearean actor, the others do well enough in this artificial atmosphere though the women's forced merriment gets to be a trial. And Miss Silverstone's acting is generally adequate until the mood suddenly darkens towards the end and then she's not up to it at all.The DVD extra with the actors' comments is quite helpful and, yes, they prerecorded their songs (you can watch them doing it here.) and lip-synching to their own voices afterwards.