Review: Much Ado About Nothing (the Joss Whedon version)

Much Ado About Nothing is a modern retelling of the Shakespearean play by Joss Whedon and his crew coming out as a limited release (one theater in San Francisco, two in LA, and two in NY) for a couple weeks until June 21st.  I was fortunate enough to have a group of friends to go with to watch a viewing in San Francisco.  All of the dialogue in the movie is the exact dialogue from the original play.  So if you've already read/watched the play or seen the 1993 version then you know the plot.  If not, it's mostly about two different couples: a pair of people jaded and cynical of love whose friends conspire to get them to love each (Beatrice and Benedick) other and a pair whose love is put to the test by a villain spewing a string of lies to tear them apart (Claudio and Hero).

So, the reason to watch this movie is because the actors are all top notch and the modifications to the scenes outside of the dialog are great.  For example, when Benedick starts to try to woo Beatrice, during the entire conversation he's just doing super awkward workout exercises/poses to try to show off.  And of course, there's Nathan Fillion, who plays the not so intelligent policeman, Dogberry.  I really don't want to describe much because words can't express the humor of how good Nathan's comedic timing and delivery of the lines works.

I was definitely surprised by how much I ended up liking Alexis Denisof (the actor who plays Benedick here, Sandy Rivers on How I Met Your Mother, and Wesley in Buffy/Angel).  His performance is spectacular and even further makes me want to actually watch Angel.  This is surprising because Wesley was one of my least favorite characters on Buffy.  But other than Dogberry, Benedick was my favorite character in this movie and as much as that can be attributed to the dialog written by William Shakespeare, I would be remiss to not give much of the credit to Alexis himself.