A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999-Michael Hoffman)

This is an extremely visual production in many ways, from the lush settings to the period costumes to all the nonverbal interactions between the characters (watch Oberon and Puck) and extra little scenes (Bottom apparently has a wife in this production).  And yet it doesn't take away from the words.  The performances are great.  Michelle Pfeiffer makes a great distant, imperialistic queen (gee, I couldn't have guessed), and Rupert Everett is credible as a smoulderingly furious Oberon despite having done My Best Friend's Wedding.  I would pay to see Kevin Kline read the phone book; I was not dissapointed by him here.  Everybody else was good, too; I could go on forever.  One of the more surprising things about this movie was the way they made Bottom from a clown into a real, sympathetic character.  The bikes were great, too.  And I liked the firefly sparks as the fairies.  All the special effects in the fairy scenes were pretty cool, though I suspect eventually they'll look as dated as the effects in the sixties production.  The sparkly body glitter for the fairies worked much better than the green paint in the sixties movie.  Well, as usual my tastes are nothing like most of the critics, but hey, what do they know?  They're just paid...um...

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