It's curious that we have a movie about William Shakespeare bearing a name like All Is True when the largest portion of it may well not be. But of course, how could any of this be known when it all took place so very long ago and, so little survives or had been recorded about the famous Bard. Writer Ben Elton has donned both his creative hats for this concoction - that of total fictional fabrication and 'what we think to know' presumptions.

Director/actor Kenneth Branagh while wanting to accurately transcribe the times may have forgotten that it's also important to entertain his audience and allow them to enjoy the visual treats of sets, costumes, and creating a mood via creative lighting. His sets are so gloomily lit there's a tenancy to lull the viewer to sleep. A particularly slow pace could even leave some reaching for the 2 x times remote. This need not have been - broad subjects such as this, set in dark times, under other great lighting/cameramen have allowed us to be transported back to bygone candle/gaslight days by using deep blacks and well-lit subjects that allowed viewers to feel the era and enjoy the rich moods simultaneously. For an artificial interpretation of reality, a thinking audience will forgive any production that considers their visual appreciation over sombre moods.

Modern liberties seem to have been catered for by suggesting that Will's Sonnets may have been written for another bloke - in this case the Earle of Southampton. Not sure where Elton came up with this suggestion as there doesn't appear all that much documentation to build on that assumption. We learn that Mr Shakespeare did not attend University, somewhat proving that a University degree can't always account for intelligence, and that his wife Anne was illiterate. There are other family intrigues to offer personal interest but what promised to be an enlightening experience comes across as a tad too heavy-handed and at times inaccessible.

Performances are good but still remains for dedicated Shakespeare followers only, and some won't even last the distance - it's not that its overlong, just takes it's time telling its (largely fabricated) story.

When the Globe Theater burns down during a performance of Henry VIII, William Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh) decides it's time to retire to Stratford-on-Avon and take up gardening. However, a troubled family past, including the death of his son Hamnet, a strained relationship with wife Ann (Judi Dench),one daughter married to a Puritan and the other depressed and single, leads to uncovering falsehoods.

Ben Elton's witty script, full of Shakespearian quotes, is a delight in the mouths of Sir Kenneth and Dame Judy -- who seems to be in more movies now that she's retired than before. Zac Nicholson's cinematography is wonderful, making everything look like contemporary paintings, and the occasional admiring, notable visitor, like Gerard Horan as Ben Jonson and Ian McKellan as the South Earl of Northhampton serve to illuminate the central characters.

For some reason, critics and general viewers have been lukewarm. Me, I think it's a very good script, great pictures and fine actors. It's not a classic, but it was a fine couple of hours.

This is like watching the Ben Elton sitcom The Upstart Crow and finding out that the cast has been replaced by different actors.

Written by Ben Elton who this time has cut the jokes. Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as William Shakespeare in his retirement years in Stratford Upon Avon after the Globe theatre burnt down in London.

It is disconcerting to see Branagh looking like Ben Kingsley in this film. Judi Dench plays his wife Ann Hathaway, although the real Ann was eight years older than her husband. Judi Dench is twenty six years older than Branagh, the age difference is noticeable.

This is a melancholy and fictionalised film. The autumnal colour palette sees Shakespeare at the end of his life haunted by the death of his son Hamnett many years earlier. He died at the age of eleven during an outbreak of the bubonic plague.

Shakespeare feels guilty that he was not there when his son died and after all these years he has unanswered questions. Being at home he needs to connect with his estranged wife and also need to deal with his daughters, one is still unmarried, the other has marital issues.

Despite his fame, Shakespeare suffers from an inferiority complex due to his family's social standing. His father had debts and this is touched upon when Shakespeare has to put up with barbed comments from local landowner and when he receives a visit by the Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen.)

I think there was no need for so much prosthetics on Branagh. It was distracting. The story is superficial, it really is meditating on loss, grief and old age. Yet is was heavy going and only livened up when McKellen showed up.

I liked Elton's The Upstart Crow and this needed the cheeky zippy fun of that series.





e film imagines Shakespeare coming home to Stratford for good after the fire, yearning for a prosperous and peaceful retirement but now forced to confront long-suppressed feelings about the death of his son 17 years before. He must deal with the angry, conflicted and still unmarried Judith, and her troubled sister Susanna, married to Dr John Hall - and also his stolidly unimpressed wife Anne. Both daughters create social upset for Shakespeare, who despite his fame is yearning for bourgeois respectability in the provinces. But the awful memory of Hamnet keeps coming back. He angrily disputes ownership of grief with Anne and Judith, pointing out that he feels as deeply as they. But Dench brings an acid rebuke to Anne's reply that, at the time of his Hamnet's death, he was writing The Merry Wives of Windsor.