A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999 Film) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

A Midsummer Night's Dream currently holds a rating of 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 61 on Metacritic, indicating generally favorable reviews. Many critics singled out Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci, and Calista Flockhart for particular praise.

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote: "Michael Hoffman's fussy production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is just such a parade of incongruities, with performances ranging from the sublime to the you-know-what... Not even Michelle Pfeiffer's commanding loveliness as the fairy queen Titania, and her ability to speak of such things as 'my bower' with perfect ease, can offset the decision to have the actors grapple awkwardly with bicycles... The hoodwinked characters of A Midsummer Night's Dream are meant to be mismatched much of the time. But not like this. The distraught Helena, played as a hand-waving, eye-rolling ditz by Calista Flockhart, hardly fits into the same film with David Strathairn's reserved Duke Theseus, or with Rupert Everett as a slinky Oberon. Everett, like the inspired Kevin Kline as the ham actor Bottom, is utterly at ease with this material in ways that many other cast members are not... Though West and especially Ms. Friel approach their roles with gratifying ease, Bale is once again given the cheesecake treatment and little occasion to rise above it. This production tarts up the play any way it can... The theatrical carryings-on of Bottom and company provide the film's best attempts at comedy. Staging a play about Pyramus and Thisbe with a troupe including Bill Irwin, Roger Rees and Sam Rockwell (as the beauteous heroine), Bottom's acting company delights its late-19th-century audience in ways Hoffman's film can only occasionally manage." In a completely unexpected turn, Rockwell moves the sceptical and bemused audience to tears as he perform's Thisbe's scene reacting to the death of Pyramus, proving that he alone among the band of actors has any real talent for the craft.

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote: "Michael Hoffman's new film of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (who else's?) is updated to the 19th century, set in Italy and furnished with bicycles and operatic interludes. But it is founded on Shakespeare's language and is faithful, by and large, to the original play... It's wonderful to behold Pfeiffer's infatuation with the donkey-eared Bottom, who she winds in her arms as 'doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle gently twist'; her love is so real, we almost believe it. Kline's Bottom tactfully humors her mad infatuation, good-natured and accepting. And Tucci's Puck suggests sometimes that he has a darker side, but it not so much malicious as incompetent."

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack wrote: "Purists will quibble, but William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a playful, sexy piece of work - just what the Bard might have conjured up for a movie adaptation of his beloved spring-fever comedy. The film is over the top - and willfully so... As might be expected, Kevin Kline steals the show with his hearty gifts for comedy... Kline, a Shakespearean veteran, has that flourish, that golden touch. In his glorious way of overdoing it - turning the very notion of acting into farce - he embodies a supreme comic madness that is audacious yet embracing... Michelle Pfeiffer plays it regal, pouty and come-hither as Titania. Her seduction of Bottom, turned to an ass under the spell of Puck (Stanley Tucci with horns and impish grin), is riotous... A real surprise is the sly comic depth of Calista Flockhart's bicycle-riding Helena, miles from Ally McBeal... Rupert Everett is imperious as Oberon, the jealous fairy king, and Tucci's Puck is amusingly tweaky as he keeps messing up his missions to drop magic nectar into lovers' eyes."

In the Washington Post, Jane Horwitz wrote: "Instead of Shakespeare's Athens, Hoffman dreams his Dream in a gorgeous Tuscan hill town at the turn of the century, with production designer Luciana Arrighi and costume designer Gabriella Pescucci creating a luscious milieu of dusty green shutters, olive groves and vineyards reminiscent of the 1986 Merchant-Ivory gem A Room With a View... some in the cast negotiate Shakespeare's lines better than others. Kevin Kline's stage savvy serves him especially well as a movie-stealing Bottom."

Also in the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote: "After watching William Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream, Michael Hoffman's adaptation of the romantic comedy, I'm left with more admiration than fairy dust. But it was pleasurable all the same... Kline and Flockhart do most of the pedaling. When Kline gets goofy – as he did in A Fish Called Wanda and In & Out, he's an irresistible, madcap Errol Flynn, twisting his good looks into hilarious contortions. And Flockhart exudes a wonderful vulnerability and sense of comic timing, as she pursues Demetrius, suffering all manner of indignity and incredulity along the way.

In Variety, Emanuel Levy described the film as a "whimsical, intermittently enjoyable but decidedly unmagical version of the playwright's wild romantic comedy... There is not much chemistry between Pfeiffer and Everett, nor between Pfeiffer and Kline, particularly in their big love scene. Kline overacts physically and emotionally, Flockhart is entertaining in a broad manner, and Pfeiffer renders a strenuously theatrical performance. Overall, the Brits give more coherent and resonant performances, especially Friel and West as the romantic couple, a restrained Everett as Oberon, and Rees as the theatrical manager."

Time Out wrote that "this Dream is middlebrow and unashamed of it. Injecting the film with fun and pathos, Kline makes a superb Bottom; it's his play and he acts it to the hilt."