The Tempest
Director: Julie Taymor
Year Released: 2010
Rating: 2.0
Theatre nerd Taymor takes on my favorite Shakespeare play about a wizard (Helen Mirren) stranded on an island with her daughter (Felicity Jones), poor Caliban (Djimon Hounsou) and mischievous sprite Ariel (Ben Whishaw). Taking the standard character of Prospero and turning him into a female doesn't add much of a feminist touch to this, and the CGI of Whishaw floating around (or Mirren floating in the cosmos) comes across as silly instead of successfully experimental. The bare-bones version of the Bard's play came across better when Taymor did it several decades ago on the stage, and she seems to work best when she's given limitations (her Spider-man musical, from what I've heard, is bloated and tacky). Hounsou comes across best in this, and I would love to see a version of Aimé Césaire's A Tempest with him reprising the role.
