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Title: Pretentious and arty
Review: This movie will certainly be popular and rate with critics. However, it is pretentious and arty in the anticipated Hollywood manner. Furthermore, it takes too many liberties with a historical personality. We know little about the life of Shakespeare, and we certainly should not read his plays autobiographically. But one thing we do know from his writings is that he valued marital fidelity. If he ever violated this standard, he was certainly shamed by his own conscience. He would never have celebrated his lawless love. It is too bad that millions of folk, forgetting that this oh-so-serious production is fiction, will get their lasting impression of England's prime cultural hero here.
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