For Shakespeare's Richard III, to be exact. But this is Reader's Digest Condensed Shakespeare, Cliff Notes Shakespeare, classroom Shakespeare: acted-out highlights of the text, annotated with scholarly commentary (Gielgud, Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, and assorted academics who require some identification), cast rehearsals, man-on-the-street interviews, and the private discussions and soliloquies of the star and freshman director, Al Pacino: "It has always been a dream of mine to communicate to other people how I feel about Shakespeare." (Dream on, Al.) By various means, the plotline of the play is more or less put across, together with lessons on such germane matters as iambic pentameter and the Wars of the Roses. (But not on such an ungermane matter as the historical truth of Richard's ascent to the throne.) Ultimately, though, the attempt to make Shakespeare more palatable to a new and a wider audience -- to demonstrate that you can wear your baseball cap backwards and your hair in a ponytail and yet still smack your lips over the Bard -- is self-defeating. The very lengths to which Pacino feels he must go to fend off the potential boredom and incomprehensibility of the full text serve only to exaggerate those perils. Looking for Richard, looking out for itself first, manages to keep clear of them, but it sacrifices Richard III in the process. With Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Kevin Conway. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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