I really can’t say that I enjoyed this. Director Joss Whedon’s modern setting and his interpretation of the stage directions just felt. . . I don’t know, blasé. Worse, everything about this whiffed of a bad made-for-TV movie or an episode of a teen television drama. See the ‘house’ setting, the music (by Whedon), the sit-com camerawork, the frantic in-scene cutting for dramatic effect, the melodramatic tone shifts, its general failure at humor, or even the all-white cast for the major examples. Why did Whedon turn Shakespeare into an episode of The O.C. filmed in black & white with talented theater actors?

Rhetorical effect aside, it’s a question that I do believe is worth trying answer. Something tells me that this was all on purpose, and not a result of a low budget or an expedited 12-day shooting schedule. Is Whedon commenting on how Shakespeare lives on in the plots of millennial teen TV dramas? Is he simply having fun blurring the line between high and low art? Moreover, is he expressing an ideal about popular mass culture, perhaps that something like The Avengers (Whedon’s superior 2012 film) and Shakespeare’s plays share more in common as populist entertainments than in where they tend to diverge in the discerning eyes of the intellectual class?

I am unfamiliar with Whedon’s vast catalog of TV work, so I think I’ll halt this line of questioning for a later date when I am more acquainted. Unfortunately, if this synthesis of art film aesthetics, Shakespearean language and television storytelling tropes were more successful, I might be more willing to invest the time to watch some of Buffy the Vampire Slayer sooner, rather than later.