Shakespeare in Love

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

With most historical films the informed viewer scrutinizes in order to cluck at errors. (There are books full of such cluckings.) With Shakespeare in Love, the more one knows, the more one can enjoy the liberties taken. [Jan. 4, 1999]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

I was carried along by the wit, the energy and a surprising sweetness.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The richest and most satisfying romantic movie of the year. It's really about two great loves at once -- the love of life and of art -- and the way that Shakespeare, like no writer before him, transformed the one into the other.

Time Richard Corliss

The true, rare glamour of the piece is its revival of two precious movie tropes: the flourishing of words for their majesty and fun, and--in the love play between Fiennes and his enchantress--the kindling of a playfully adult eroticism.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Shakespeare meets Sherlock, and makes for pure enchantment in the inspired conjecture behind Shakespeare in Love.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

One of those entertaining confections that's so pleasing to the eye and ear you'd have to be a genuine Scrooge to struggle against it.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Paltrow and Fiennes are so good and the script, referencing not only "Romeo and Juliet" but "Twelfth Night," is so consistently intelligent that seduction is inevitable.

Film.com Norman Green

These are the heights of cinematic achievement.

New York Post Rod Dreher

If she (Paltrow) were the only good thing about Shakespeare in Love, it still would have been worth seeing; that she is the crown jewel in a glittering tiara of a film studded with writing and acting gems testifies to the deep pleasures to be found in this remarkable movie.

Portland Oregonian Barry Johnson

Like "Amadeus," Shakespeare in Love works splendidly as an appreciation of an artist in the heat of creation, and it breathes life into "Romeo and Juliet."

Film.com Gemma Files

It's a rollicking good time, full of genuine emotional pull and incandescent acting, and anchored by a passionate love for the theater itself which puts most human liaisons--including Shakespeare and Viola's -- to shame.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Some scholars may scowl, some lowbrows may scoff. But, like wordwise Will, these filmmakers know how to win a crowd -- from the queen down to the groundlings, from the sky above to the stage below. Bravo! [5 December 1998, Friday, p.A]

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Anyone not romantically inclined going into Shakespeare in Love surely will be by the end.

Film.com Peter Brunette

Stoppard's luxuriant, richly comic language cascades and washes over you, and, for once, more than keeps pace with the sprightly pictures.

TNT RoughCut Jennifer Nowitzky

The most romantic film of the year.

Newsweek David Ansen

The beauty of this extremely clever movie, directed with fleet, robust theatricality by John Madden, is how deftly it manages to work on multiple levels.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie becomes something quite rare and magical: a text about a text that is also full of life. In other words, it's a true first: It's both postmodern and fun!

Variety Lael Lowenstein

Exquisitely acted, tightly directed and impressively assembled.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

It's easy to suspend disbelief and embrace this historically creative fiction, whose clever relationship to what's known and what's unresolved is part of what makes it so intriguing and so romantic.

Mr. Showbiz Eleonore Snow

The result is a film that is as witty, astute, and romantic as its timeless subject.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The end result is a delightful, though a smidge too long, reminder of one of the reasons we so enjoy going to the movies: perchance to dream.

San Francisco Examiner Walter Addiego

Its brazen mixture of the comic and dramatic, the high and low and the emotional and intellectual is positively Shakespearean.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The whole ensemble has a hoot with this material, and their joy is contagious.

USA Today Mike Clark

Accessibly brainy screen charmer.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Inordinately clever, sprightly romantic comedy.

Dallas Observer M. V. Moorhead

These filmmakers have taken a historical figure and made him into a hot-blooded romantic hero. Shakespeare did that a time or two himself.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Delivers the goods, if the goods you're in the market for happen to be a clever romance concerning William Shakespeare that's unlikely to cause anyone to reassess their notions of Shakespeare, romance, or enjoyment.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Not a great film, but it's an excuse to have an evening of pure enjoyment with a little culture painlessly mixed in.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Good fun, though not more than up-market situation comedy studded with the usual leaps out of period-speak to swipe at contemporary Hollywood.

TV Guide Sandra Contreras

This delightful, fast-paced and entirely fictional imagining of Shakespeare's life during the writing of "Romeo and Juliet" brims with witticisms predicated on the determination to have a rollicking good time exploring the link between libido and creativity.

Salon.com Laura Miller

A corny, old-fashioned backstage farce.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This romantic farce has a talented cast and energy to spare, but somehow the ingredients don't burn as brightly as one would expect from such promising ingredients.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

It soon becomes evident just how inane a film this is.