Funny and clever and well plotted, with lots of good riffs on Shakespeare and theatre. And avoids the cliched happy ending (I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not!) ( )

Somehow, I think this is one of those situations where Marc Norman wrote a screenplay, Tom Stoppard came in and made it awesome, and the WGA/contracts gave them equal writing credit. Because this is not a Stoppard script. There are moments of Stoppard awesome, and I don't want to suggest it isn't a witty, fun script, but it is not a Stoppard script.

(I sekritly love this movie a lot, even through Paltrow's frankly disappointing performance. Everyone else is delightful.) ( )

Drama is Like Life，Life is Like a Drama

Maybe because I know Shakespeare not much, when I was watching the movie Shakespeare in love, I thought it’s a real story happened in history. After searching and reading related resources, I just know that the story about Shakespeare in the movie is made up. This makes me begin to think about the story.
In the movie, a young guy falls in love with a young beautiful woman. However, the young guy has been married and the young woman is going to marry with the other one under the arrangement of her parents. The young guy so miss the young woman that he go to see her beneath her window. When I got here, I thought the plot is so familiar and maybe I have read the story before. Immediately, I realized that it just like the plot of Shakespeare’s famous play--Romeo and Juliet. Just when I wonder whether the scriptwriter of Shakespeare in love plagiarize the script of Romeo and Juliet, at the same time, I have to say this idea is amazing and genius. If I were the scriptwriter to write a story about Shakespeare but I can never think up words and sentences as gorgeous as Shakespeare wrote, I think it’s not a trick but a great idea to borrow a part of plot and words from this great writer’s great writing—Romeo and Juliet. Besides, this movie was born from an interesting idea that only a person in a passionate love can write a love story like Romeo and Juliet.
Like more than 1000 readers at heart, 1000 Hamlet, each reader has its own Romeo and Juliet in the mind. This movie just shows viewers one kind of Romeos and Juliets in the bodys’ of Shakespeare and Olivia in movie makers’ mind. Drama is like life. How could we know if there are thousands of love stories like Romeo and Juliet having happened or still happening in our real lives?
After the similar plot in the first half part, we see a total different ending in the movie. Even if this “Romeo” and this “Juliet” not die, even if Olivia don’t need to marry duke any more, they still separate from each other. That means, a drama is not a story that can be imagined as you like. Think about real life. Even though they can be together in the end of movie, years later, they may lose feeling to each other, Shakespeare may go to chase other girls and Olivia may have a affair with other guy. That’s real life, but is still often seen in dramas.
Drama is Like Life，Life is Like a Drama ( )