Well I saw this movie the night before last and I was somewhat disappointed. I really wanted to see the Producers but they were having some sort of party for the Sony Open in Hawaii. They had a red carpet that was blocked off and half the theatre was shut down with a massive black tarp blocking it off from the rest of the place. I peeked behind the tarp and saw they had all kinds of good food and even some sort of Ketel One vodka display. So we ended up seeing the Casanova instead.
The movie was a fairly straitforward romantic comedy with lots of mistaken identity and people masquerading as one another. I just really disagree with the reviewer who said it was similar to Shakespeare in Love. That movie was head and shoulders better then this one.
The story is about how Heath Leger playing Casanova falls in love with Sienna Millers character Franchesca Bruni. They have several bits of mistaken identity and people concealing themselves but it all just came off as a bunch of crappy sight gags and people acting like fools.
One of the bad things was that the two actors did not have any chemistry at all and you didn't understand why they fell for each other. Bruni didn't like Casanova at first but she falls in love with him even though he is a womanizer and such. He also lies to her and pretends he is different people over and over but she doesn't seem to care about that. I guess she falls in love with him because he decided to put himself on the hook for heresy. Whatever the case it all felt ham-handed and false for some reason.
Another thing I didn't like was both Oliver Platt and Jeremy Irons characters. They both were terrible even though you know they are both great actors. Oliver Platt played a baffoonish Genoan lard merchant that was supposed to marry Bruni. He is big and fat complete with a giant, fake belly. A fat lard merchant see funny funny stuff. He was basically a poorly written clown character.
While Irons really gets a raw deal. He plays a Papal Inquisitor who is supposed to be menacing but came out stupid. I know Irons could have really done a great job if was in a role that was put together decently. I guess that is more a fault of the script then anything else. They should have written him as a very deadly no-nonsense sort of character to play off of the light hearted baffoonery that surrounded him. Then you would have feared for the life of Casanova if you had any emotional investment in the character. Instead Irons was just embarrassing in the role.
As a whole the movie could have done with some script editing to make the story flow a bit better. I think in the right hands this movie could have been a real gem. I liked the basic outline of the plot and some of the twists were pretty interesting. But all in all the movie was very disappointing and I was expecting better.
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