Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
AutCuddly
Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,
Griff Lees
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
PeachHamBeach
Ned Kynaston is the most beautiful "woman" of the London stage. This is the kind of role that I've always admired Billy Crudup for. He plays an actor in a time period (1600s) when only men were allowed to act on stage, even if the character portrayed is female. Kynaston is an actor so dedicated to his work that he has taught himself the graces of mime and can alter his masculine voice to sound like the most elegant and refined woman in the world. In his private life, he has a lover in the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin) who insists Kynaston don his wig when they "make a beast with 2 backs" in bed on the stage. On the sly, Kynaston's dressing assistant, Maria (Claire Danes) has been watching Kynaston's acting career and wishing she herself could not only be legally allowed to perform, but could do it with the same natural grace as Kynaston. She practices his mime, steals his beautiful frocks and wigs, and begins performing the very same role of Desdemona from Othello in a small nightspot in town. Things begin to go awry when it is discovered that Maria is acting illegally, but the King (Rupert Everett) is so moved by Maria's acting that he decides to reverse the ban on females acting on the stage. Kynaston, both jealous and angry that she has been stealing his thunder, screams in rage at Maria in front of the King's mistress, and suddenly is a disgraced man out of work. He gets beaten up by what I believe are 17th century bigots (I might be mistaken though.) After he recovers from his injuries, he tries to audition for a "male" role, but is unable to shake the habit of moving and speaking in feminine mannerisms. He flees in tears, and ends up being looked after in a boarding house by Maria. I really loved the "almost" love scene and the discussion that lead up to it. That's all I'll say for now. The movie never stops being entertaining, nor interesting to look upon, with its lavish costumes and production design. There is a scary moment towards the end that almost made me throw my laptop on the floor because I'd thought the movie was ruined, but luckily, I loved the film from beginning to end. Bravo!
Red-125
Stage Beauty (2004) was directed by Richard Eyre. It's set in England in 1660. The monarchy has just been restored, and Charles II is on the throne. (In a clumsy bit of exposition, an actor runs in and says, "The theaters have been closed for 17 years. People want something new!") Of course, what they got is what we now call Restoration comedy. However, they continued to love Shakespeare, and a great Shakespeare performance could still fill theaters.Billy Crudup plays Ned Kynaston, a brilliant male actor who stars in female roles. (We all learned that in Shakespeare's time the female roles were played by men, because women were forbidden to be on the stage. I didn't realize that those laws were still in effect in 1660, but they were.) Ned is really great at what he does. He's been rigidly (cruelly?) schooled to remove every behavior from his repertoire that could be considered masculine. He's a major star. Enter Claire Danes as Maria Hughes, Ned's dresser. She has ambitions to go on the stage as well, and tries to mimic Kynaston's movements and make them her own. She actually performs on an improvised stage in a tavern, and is received very well. She wants to be the first woman to act on the real English stage. As mentioned in the movie, French women had been allowed on the stage by 1660. It's interesting--but not mentioned in the film--that these women were permitted to perform in London. However, they were booed off the stage by the audience. Apparently, the population wasn't quite ready to see women played by women actors. In the film, through a complex interaction at court, involving Nell Gwynn, the king's mistress, women suddenly were allowed to act on the London stage. (Nell Gwynn was indeed the king's mistress, and she was indeed an actor, but not in 1660, when she was only ten years old.)Because of this new ruling, Claire Danes can go on the stage as Desdemona in Othello, and she becomes a star. (A woman did, indeed, play Desdemona in 1660, so that's historically accurate.) Meanwhile, Crudup has been beaten brutally by thugs hired by a vengeful enemy, and he's no longer in demand. So, this is a classic story of theatrical crossed trajectories. (Think about "The Actor.") That's when the movie gets really interesting, and that's where I'll stop talking about the plot.Billy Crudup is superb as Ned Kynaston, Ben Chaplin is excellent as his lover, the Duke of Buckingham, and Hugh Bonneville is wasted in the role of Samuel Pepys, who keeps turning up, but never appears to be in the same film as everyone else.However, the obvious star of Stage Beauty is Claire Danes. Danes was truly charming when she played Juliet at age 17. She was 25 when she acted in this movie, and she got it exactly right. In the film, she's not a very good actor when she starts. It must have been difficult to be a very good actor playing an actor who's not very good. Danes manages it, and more. Crudup's role is more difficult and, to my mind, more central to the film. But what you'll remember is Claire Danes.We saw the film on DVD, and it worked very well. It's an excellent movie, and I highly recommend it.
davidgarnes
I watched this movie recently because I like historical dramas, especially those with an English setting. What a surprise to find it so first-rate in every aspect. Why did this film disappear? Why wasn't it nominated for more awards? The plot is fascinating and based on fact (the transition in English theatrical history from men playing women to women playing women); the art direction and costumes wonderful; the cinematography outstanding; and, best of all, the acting superb. The screenplay is also outstanding and takes the film to a deeper level of the examination of identity, gender roles, and relationships between men/women and men/men. Do we act as we are? Are we as we act? Fascinating.Billy Crudup and Claire Danes are a great team, and the scenes between the two of them are compelling and totally engrossing. Richard Griffiths, Tom Wilkinson (what a fine actor he is), Ben Chaplin are all superb, and Rupert Everett cuts quite the over-the-top figure as King Charles. The King Charles spaniels aren't bad, either.Don't miss this superb film.
Neil Welch
I quite enjoyed this, but I'm not wholly sure why.The story was a little muddled in places, at least in terms of consistency, motivation and the like. But the performances were mostly pleasing, not least Billy Crudup who came over as very engaging despite playing a character whose behaviour was at times gratuitously unpleasant.Rupert Everett was a hoot.I have a problem with Claire Danes. I like her, but I'm not convinced she's actually all that good an actress. This feeling seems to be driven by one of her facial expressions which gets massively overused (it shows up here, and also in Stardust and Little Women - I've seen all three films fairly recently), and it's the expression where she looks as if someone has just delivered themselves of the most offensively malodorous flatulence directly under her nose. I'm sure you know the one I mean - if you've seen any of those films, then you're bound to know. And it's an all purpose expression for anything bad, from mild worry to just survived a murder attempt. On the other hand, she does a creditable English accent (as does Crudup in this film).Oh, and I suspect that in Restoration England, it was most unlikely that anyone would say, "Get the f*** off my stage" notwithstanding the provenance of f*** as good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon of the first order. An unwelcome anachronistic Americanism, as out of place as mammoths in Egypt.Whoops, I'm getting ahead of myself.....
