Love's Labour's Lost

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Branagh and Love's Labour's Lost all but will themselves into liftoff. They achieve it, and in doing so, they somehow make it right to our pleasure centers with their generous embrace of stardust and pizazz.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

A trifle of a farce fashioned into a '30s musical that gaily trips as much as it lightly skips, but nonetheless marks a welcome return to form.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The effect is weird but it, actually, kind of works, illuminating both Shakespeare and the artifice of musicals.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The leaden bits do bring the proceedings to a screeching halt too many times, but the costumes are breathtaking, and the details (like color-coordinated martinis) are dazzling.

San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson

The writer-director has come up with a sumptuous, happy piece of fluff.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There's not a song I wouldn't hear again with pleasure, or a clip that might not make me smile, but as a whole, it's not much. Like cotton candy, it's better as a concept than as an experience.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Branagh's attempt to meld Shakespeare's densely verbal early comedy with Broadway show tunes fails, thanks to stunt casting, poor singing and dancing, and the incompatibility of the two art forms.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Even though Love's Labour's Lost is, in showbiz terms, a turkey stuffed with chestnuts, you wouldn't trade it for a pot of gold.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's never hugely engaging and it's instantly forgettable, but it has a certain goofy charm.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Too many moments of evident labor weigh this clever production down. To quote the playwright: ''Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire.''

Chicago Tribune Marc Caro

Filling his movie with bright colors and giddy energy, Branagh has made a labor of love in which the labor is all too apparent.

Newsweek David Ansen

Labour teeters on the edge of the amateur. Yet it's hard not to root for its moonstruck spirit, or to succumb to the panache of the pastiche.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

Has its moments of charm, but it's ultimately a fascinating failure that surely looked better on paper than it does on the screen.

USA Today Mike Clark

Even at its best, the movie plays like a clip reel.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It's all very colorful, but the movie's diverse elements clash as often as they cooperate.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Love's Labour's Lost is flawed, but Kenneth Branagh remains our greatest living interpreter of Shakespeare.

TV Guide Ken Fox

As if to prove that light romantic comedy can be just as difficult to stage as Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh fails at both, simultaneously.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Branagh's take on the play comes right up to the edge of disaster but stubbornly refuses to leap in.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Branagh has cut, pasted and aggressively abridged Love's Labour's Lost, and piled it high with fancy visuals to make sure we get the drift.

Time Richard Corliss

But this is a sloppy job, both in little goofs...and in the cast's gung-ho amateurism. It's like Shakespeare done by the "Fame" kids.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Taken as a whole, the movie seems to be searching for a harmony it never really achieves.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A stink bomb of a movie.

Film.com Robert Horton

These are good people, yet the director has them carrying on like community theater actors playing to the balcony. It isn't fair to them, and it isn't fitting for Shakespeare.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It ought to be delightful, but it isn't.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Hamming shamelessly as Berowne, Branagh is overseasoned for his part ... he's as desperate as a veteran social director at a Catskills hotel about to fold.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

An atrocity exhibition from start to finish.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Misguided version of one of the Bard's best comedies.

Slate David Edelstein

Unfathomably awful.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

KEN, KEN, KEN, not another Shakespeare, pleeeeeeez.