I was all set to fall in love with Kenneth Branagh’s direct-to-video AS YOU LIKE IT, set in a trading colony in Meiji Japan. I’ve been a fan of Branagh’s work since I saw HENRY V in college, and I’ve had a thing for Japanese culture since I read James Clavell’s _Shogun_ in the 7th grade. Thus, when I fired up this version of AS YOU LIKE IT while staying in a hotel outside of Yokohama (coincidentally, the site of the Meiji trading colony), it seemed like the perfect combination of material and viewer.
Alas, not even Brian Blessed, Alfred Molina, and Kevin Kline could save this slow, plodding, and unsatisfying film. The film’s Anglo-Japanese setting doesn’t really work, its pacing could have used some help in the editing room, and I had a sense of the film’s self awareness that this was, indeed, Shakespeareit was giving us. As written, AS YOU LIKE IT is great fun, but this production seems to miss the point.
I’m not sure what’s happening with Branagh. His star shined so brightly, but it has been guttering these last several years. Where’s the confident, exciting filmmaker of HENRY V, DEAD AGAIN, and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? I haven’t seen his remake of SLEUTH yet, but Time magazine’s impression does not look promising. What did he lose along the way?
Well, whatever he lost, he didn’t find it while making this latest AS YOU LIKE IT. Move along. There’s nothing to see here.
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