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What’s the worst Shakespeare film of all time? Until now, I would have said Peter Greenaway’s preposterously egocentric Prospero’s Books — but this runs it perilously close.
Director Julie Taymor has made a gender-bending, feminist version of Shakespeare’s last play, but that’s the least of its worries.
Helen Mirren speaks the lines well as Prospera, and she forms a touching mother-daughter bond with the pretty and promising Felicity Jones, as Miranda.
No, the problems start with some spectacularly kitsch special-effects, horribly unfunny clowning by Russell Brand as Trinculo, an incomprehensible Djimon Hounsou as Caliban, and a dismal Reeve Carney as a Ferdinand seemingly plucked from the world’s wettest boyband.
The result is misjudged, un-poetic and tedious — like a pompous production of Mamma Mia, without the Abba songs.
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A shower of tedium