The 'Midsummer' of Love: Magic's still there in romantic comedy: Flockhart doing the Bard? Dream on
William Shakespeare is Hollywood's new Jane Austen. As if that weren't bizarre enough, notice that the screenplay credit on "William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream" goes to the director, Michael Hoffman. Further proof that fairies are spreading magic potions throughout the land is that Ally McBeal can now be considered a Shakespearean actress. What fools these mortals be!

But all's well that ends well with this "Midsummer Night's Dream." Despite wildly uneven casting — and matching performances — it's a sprightly story of a night of strange amour, in which comically mismatched couples have a lot of sorting out to do.
 
Hoffman transplants the Bard's wacky "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" romantic comedy from ancient Greece to a 19th-century Tuscany where bustles are out and bicycles are in — in short, a world where anything goes, which is why Calista Flockhart, emaciated portrayer of TV's "Ally McBeal," has a major role as a lovesick drip. "Oh, spite! Oh, hell!" she whines when she can't catch the eye of the man of her dreams (Christian Bale), who is betrothed to her best friend (Anna Friel), who in turn is eloping with a brooding, romantic type (a frequently undressed Dominic West).

Flockhart gets major screen time, and for that, she is well cast as Helena, a spoiled brat, an obsessive-compulsive before the advent of Prozac.

The misallied foursome camps out under the bowers of the fairies, who are in full bacchanal mode and eager to share. Rupert Everett and a gauzy, glistening Michelle Pfeiffer are the fairy King and Queen whose own romantic bickering has a trickle-down effect on anyone who ventures into the forest that night.

A little fairy dust on the eyelids would have set things right. But the potion is misapplied with a heavy hand by Puck, a sprite who, in the hairy, squat body of Stanley Tucci, looks as though he has been pumping at Gold's Gym.

Everett seems the most comfortable with Shakespearean verse — perhaps it's the British accent. Kevin Kline is also in rare form as the hammy Bottom, a scenery-chewer so voracious it makes good sense when he is transformed into an ass for a night. He brays happily in the arms of the Fairy Queen, who is under the spell of some "love the one you're with" potion.

While the movie's low points include a female mud wrestle and an excess of strategically placed hair extensions, the funniest scenes show Pfeiffer ministering to the sprung-haired ass in her garlanded boudoir. The recent spate of Shakespeare movies only underscores how well that playwright understood the enduring nature of the human comedy.


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