Seeing As You Like It, William Shakespeare's romantic comedy of mistaken identity brought back memories of an amateur production of the Carousel Theater here in Vancouver many years ago in which my son David played a small role. It was a wonderful presentation that thoroughly captured the genius of Shakespeare's delightful imagination. Unfortunately, the new filmed version by Kenneth Branagh with its big budget and professional cast is not in the least bit as convincing or entertaining. It is miscast, over produced, over acted, and simplistic with its multi-layered plot made easier to follow than Sesame Street.

Set in Japan in the 19th Century after the country was opened to the West as a trading partner, the royalty of England have been reinvented as wealthy merchants living on the Japanese seacoast. Neither the opulent backgrounds nor the conceit of the script, however, has any impact on either understanding or enjoyment of the play and the setting seems to be simply a marketing decision not an artistic one. The film opens with a kabuki scene at the court of Duke Senior (Brian Blessed). His brother Frederick, also played by Blessed with black hair, interrupts the proceedings to forcibly overthrow his brother's dukedom and the elder Duke is banished to the Arden Forest. Orlando, played by the Nigerian born David Oyelowo, and his brother Oliver (Adrian Lester) then proceed to fight over their position in the court.

Oliver, aligned with Frederick, entices his brother to take on a 300-pound sumo wrestler to all but certain doom but, as the script will have it, the underdog prevails in spite of a weight differential of about 150 pounds. In addition to being victorious at sport, he also falls for one of his well-wishers, the attractive Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard), daughter of Duke Senior. Fearful of her safety at the court, Rosalind, pretending to be a man and, taking the name of Ganymede from the handsome cup bearer to the Gods in Greek mythology, sneaks out with her cousin Celia (Romola Garai) and the clown Touchstone (Alfred Molina) to seek out her father in the Forest of Arden. Soon they are joined by Orlando who also fears for his life after a fight with his brother Oliver over their inheritance.

Before long, a bunch of other personages wander into the film including a melancholy philosopher named Jaques (Kevin Kline) who is described as "an exiled courtier", a young shepherd Silvius (Alex Wyndham) who pursues his reluctant girlfriend Phebe (Jade Jefferies), and others. Curiously, there are two characters named Jaques and two named Oliver, something that most writers would go to any length to avoid. The play is best noted for the cynical soliloquy chronicling the seven ages of man, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts", delivered with properly dour expression by Kline.

It would not be a Shakespearean comedy without some gender confusion and Rosalind, after noticing Orlando's love poems neatly positioned on trees all over their neck of the woods, knows that Orlando loves her. Approaching Orlando in her boy disguise as Ganymede, Rosalind endeavors to teach him the finer points of courtship if he would just pretend that he is a she. She uses her charm to seduce Orlando, but also is drawn reluctantly into a relationship with the shepherdess Phebe. In Elizabethan conventions, this meant that a boy playing the girl Rosalind would dress as a boy and then be wooed by another boy playing Phebe.

Quite naturally, this being a comedy and all, everyone ends up happy, (dramatized in a finale of the utmost silliness by Branagh) except for Jaques who, in character, decides not to return to the court. All the pieces are in place for the film to be successful but there are key elements that work against it. For the play to work at all, Rosalind has to be believable as a young man. If she is not, Orlando looks like a complete fool, and the play is robbed of its intended homoerotic playfulness. In this case, Branagh does not even attempt to have Rosalind look masculine and the scenes with Orlando in which he/she is teaching him how to express his love are unconvincing (unless you read it that Orlando goes along with the ruse and the author is simply making a statement about role playing, the masks people wear (himself?) in life, and the inauthenticity of self).

Rosalind is supposed to be pure, innocent, perhaps a little naïve but definitely virtuous. Howard, however, is very un-maiden like in appearance and manner and lacks any noticeable chemistry with her lover. She tries so hard to put the correct inflections in the words that she robs them of whatever poetry they might have had, conveying the impression that she is trying out eagerly for a grammar school play. This is Branagh's fifth attempt to put Shakespeare on film and I'm sure it won't be his last. After achieving considerable artistic but not financial success with the first three, he has opted in this latest film for less of an artistic statement than an overtly commercial approach. Love's Labours Lost was an unmitigated disaster – scorched by the critics and shunned by audiences. Unfortunately, As You Like It may follow in its path.

SPOILER: This will not be a spoiler for most, but you should be aware that Brian Blessed plays two roles: the Duke Senior and Duke Frederick.

Of the many reviews of As You Like It seen here, I have not noticed any that praised Brian Blessed in the dual roles of Duke Senior and Duke Frederick. He was breathtaking. Blessed is a recognized national treasure for his booming voice and over-the-top characters, but here he brought life to subtle passages, sometimes overlooked, and conveyed the contrast between the two brothers, complicated as siblings can be, as I have never seen by two different actors.

His ease with the language made it equally understandable and natural to the point that the viewer can instantly enter into the characters' thoughts. His grasp of the meaning behind the words is so eloquently communicated that I sorely wished he was also playing the part of Jaques! I would love to hear his interpretation of "All the world's a stage".

While his Duke Frederick brings nuance to the machinations of the villain, perhaps most impressive is his Duke Senior. The gentle wisdom and grace of this Duke is something not expected of this bombastic actor, but it reveals the great actor himself and opens the door of our expectations to see much more of him in future.

I have to admit that I don't really care for most of Shakespeare's comedies, which involve huge casts, pairs of lovers, and a lot of talking at chance meetings. So it is with AS YOU LIKE IT, which I suspect for most people will only be really enjoyable as a lot of scattered scenes performed by some really good actors. That said, it's been going on 20 years (!) since Branagh first started directing these Shakespeare extravaganzas, so what point has he gotten to? First, the bad points, then the good points.

After almost 20 years, it's clear that Branagh has almost no new ideas when it comes to moving the camera around. A lot of the shots and gimmicks have been ripped straight from HENRY V and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Sometimes they're simple and effective and the right choices; other times, the recycling is just embarrassing.

Second, Branagh continues to bite off more than he can chew by attempting novel or gimmicky stagings of these venerable old plays as films, a trend that he began with HAMLET (Four Hour Hamlet! No Lines Cut!), carried through to LOVE'S LABOURS LOST (an ambitious failure, but still a failure with a Capital F) and now here with an AS YOU LIKE IT set in Japan, a choice comprehensible only because Branagh explains it to the audience with several title cards. Which means, it's an incomprehensible choice because he has to explain it so much. This is the sort of adventurous staging that works OK on the London stage, where there are 100 Shakespeare stagings a year and this sort of transposition is expected in order to keep things fresh. But on film, it is mostly confusing (although very pretty).

Now for the good things, and they are very much worth noting as hopeful signs for the future of Branagh's grand Shakespearean experiment.

The casting in this film is almost uniformly excellent. Branagh has (mercifully) abandoned showy stunt casting in favor of assembling a diverse cast that actually can act and actually has Shakespearean experience. Kevin Kline, David Oyewelo, the lovely Bryce Dallas Howard, Adrian Lester, Alfred Molina, Romola Garai (a real surprise)... you're in good hands with all these performers, which is not something you could say of a Branagh Shakespeare film since HENRY V. Furthermore, Branagh has stopped the nonsense where anyone can just show up on these films sporting whatever accents they like, regardless of the film's time or place setting (which was tolerable in MUCH ADO, but silly in HAMLET and excruciating in LOVE'S LABOURS LOST). This film is about English characters: so everyone's got an English accent, even the Americans. Thank God. Branagh has also managed a way to cast fine actors of color without trying to make us believe that a black actor and white actor are siblings (MUCH ADO, again).

Bryce Dallas Howard -- dare I say it -- it a better actress and more luminously beautiful and commanding a screen presence than Emma Thompson was in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Even more surprisingly, Branagh has also given his faithful old company of secondary players from the old Renaissance Theatre Company -- you'll recognize them from his previous films -- room to actually act like the professionals they are. Brian Blessed doesn't quite pull it off in a dual role, and well, Richard Briers is ubiquitous in Branagh's films, but Richard Clifford, Jimmy Yuill, Gerard Horan and Patrick Doyle are given a little bit more to do and it's a real asset to the film. These performers assist in giving AS YOU LIKE IT -- dare I say it (dare I even hope it) -- the earthy, humanistic feel that made his HENRY V so very memorable. Which leads one to wonder: WHY did Branagh go for all this flash and glitter with Hollywood stars (starting with MUCH ADO) in the first place, eventually leading to the train wreck that was LOVE's LABOURS LOST? Why didn't he just stick with the approach that worked so brilliantly with HENRY V - still one of the greatest Shakespeare films of all time? For God's sake... BRING BACK THE RENAISSANCE THEATRE COMPANY!!!!

If Branagh has not really grown as a director, this film shows that his creative team -- cinematographer Roger Lanser, production designer Tim Harvey, and composer Patrick Doyle -- continue to do him just as good service as ever, and even seem to kick it up a notch.

The verdict? A problematic film, one that might not appeal to everyone, and decidedly less showy or fun than his popular MUCH ADO... but all in all, a definite step forward for the great Branagh Shakespeare film project. He should get another chance from HBO Films to do another one.