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As You Like It
List Price: $26.98Our Price: $20.99 You Save: $5.99 (22%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0026359401923
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Item Dimensions: 100
Label: Hbo Home Video
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed),
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
MPN: 94019
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 25, 2007
Running Time: 127 minutes
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Editorial Review:
If you think stuffy old Shakespeare could be livened up with some ninjas, Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) has heard your call. Adapter/director Branagh has set the pastoral comedy As You Like It in feudal Japan, where the characters are still British (they live in a community established by Western merchants) but now have reason to dress up in lush Japanese fabrics and engage in sumo wrestling. Due to a feud between two noble brothers, Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard, The Village) is banished and ends up disguised as a man in a nearby forest. There she tests the faith of her beloved (and also banished) Orlando (David Oyelowo, MI-5), who can't recognize her because she looks like a Dickensian ragamuffin. Meanwhile, a variety of other star-crossed lovers romp around the forest and zen gardens, sparring about love and melancholy. Branagh, never a subtle director, takes every opportunity to squeeze in slapstick and action (like the aforementioned ninjas), but he also keeps the language clear and the movie is beautiful to look at. The strong cast includes Kevin Kline (who previously frolicked in a movie adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Frida), Romola Garai (I Capture the Castle, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights), and Adrian Lester (Hustle, Love's Labors Lost). --Bret Fetzer
Emmy award winner Kenneth Branagh the man who redefined Shakespeare for a whole new generation with Henry V Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet brings the Bard's most delightful comedy to sensational life! Rosalind is a young woman living in the court of her uncle when she falls in love with Orlando a young gentleman of the kingdom. When Rosalind is banished she flees into the forest of Arden disguised as a man...only to encounter Orlando who has also been exiled! But can she win his heart disguised as she is? With a setting inspired by 19th century Japan and a star-studded cast including Kevin Kline (Dave A Prairie Home Companion) Bryce Dallas Howard (Spider-Man 3 The Lady In The Water) and Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2 The Da Vinci Code) AS YOU LIKE IT once again proves that all the world's a stage. Come enjoy!Running Time: 90 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 026359401923 Manufacturer No: 94019
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Take some getting-used-to, but enjoyable in the end.
Usually, I prefer my opera or play set in traditional production, with the time frame, costumes and cast as plausible and realistic as possible. This movie is therefore a disappointment to me at the very beginning, with the background set to 19 century Japan and the de Boys brothers played by black actors. Director Kenneth Branagh's leisurely pacing does not help.
Strangely, as the story goes on and the action moves away from the Japanese "court" to the forest, I find myself gradually ... Read More
Rating:  - Pure joy
This is my first review at Amazon.com despite being a customer for countless years, but I felt compelled to add my praise to what is undoubtedly a very polarizing version of "As You Like It". Like other reviewers, this is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, for reasons that were not clear even to me until today. And like others, I was initially taken aback by the Japanese setting and conglomeration of styles and cast (I watched this on an airplane and initially thought I had chosen the wrong movie!). ... Read More
Rating:  - Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?
Can a Shakespeare gender-bending comedy ever work on film? Onstage one buys the convention that a gorgeous woman can convince everyone that she is really a he, but I've yet to see it work on film. Bryce Dallas Howard is talented and gorgeous, but it takes another kind of sex appeal to play Rosalind. It takes a woman who isn't afraid to convincingly play a man! Kate Hepburn could have pulled it off, or a young Emma Thompson, but Ms. Howard never even attempts to walk in a man's shoes. That spoils the ... Read More
Rating:  - East is West
One may have little regard for As You Like It and still feel that chopping it to pieces and scattering the bits over the vernal salad of Arden is not a recipe for success. Cut two-thirds of the play as Branagh does and what remains? A string of sketchy vignettes without the time or the text to breathe, develop and resolve. At best the results can be likened to a volume of illustrations: easy, superficial, providing discrete visualizations of key moments, but aliterate and threadbare in itself.
... Read More
Rating: - I had a hard time deciding what to rate this movie.
I couldn't decide how many stars to give, three or four, I decided on four. My reason, I liked the movie. I laughed in it and enjoyed the romance. I loved the beauty of the music and the scenery. I liked the directing, the play was easy to follow and the words well spoken. Why I almost gave it a three is because it was set in Japan (what was up with that???) and Rosalind when playing a man shouldn't have been so made up. The main reason though was because I asked my dog the same thing another reviewer asked ... Read More
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