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or Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter Reviewed by Bruce Cantwell When I saw the preview for Shakespeare in Love, I thought it was going to be a fiasco. Someone had assembled a cast of everyone who had been in a period picture in the past couple of years, threw in Shakespeare and was going for laughs. It wasn't until I noticed a few names in a newspaper ad that I caught a real glimpse at what was going on. Two words: Tom Stoppard. Tom Stoppard, apart from being our most lyrical playwright, has been writing pseudo-Shakespeare on and off for thirty years. If he has one weakness, and I don't consider it to be one, it's that Stoppard engages the head much more readily than he does the heart. The subject of this film: a fantasia on the creation of Romeo and Juliet more than overcomes Stoppard's emotional chilliness. We can easily believe that Shakespeare would fall for Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow). Apart from being a total knockout, she's crazy for his poetry. It's easy to believe Viola could fall for Shakespeare's poetry. It's been seducing for four hundred years. Like Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare in Love has something for everyone. I've heard it referred to as a "chick flick" because of the romantic title but it's primarily a comedy that works both on broad and refined levels. The more you know about Shakespeare's life and work, the more levels you'll get, but if you've never seen a Shakespeare play in your life you'll not be disappointed. Besides, guys, if you can't look at Gwyneth Paltrow in various states of undress for a couple of hours, what are you, some kind of fag? And if you are, how could you pass up the costumes?

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