Why this movie sucks

Bitter, yeah.

While the text doesn't describe the making of the floral (herbal) potion, I didn't find it too much of a stretch that Timothy's enchanted script could direct him to gather ingredients. And notice that Timothy seeks out places to spray the potion in sorted-sex locations (like the firehouse). If he "missed" and created a few heterosexual couplings, who cares?

Here's a discussion of the elixir, from no less than the Royal Shakespeare Company: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/archive/science_nature/midsu mmer.shtml

And ballet dancing is effeminate? I know some dancers who could kick your a55.

"It makes no sense for the characters who have never read Shakespeare to suddenly spout it simply because they have fallen in love." Um, they're under a spell, dude. Poetic license. A fairy tale with logical rules wouldn't be much of a fairy tale, would it?

Not garnished? Not finished!

I don't think it's such a bad thing to play around a bit with the original text. It's a fairy tale based on Shakespeare's play, and the potion is useful to move the story along. Just as texts undergo deletions for production, introducing something that's useful is fair. Remember the idea of "willing suspension of disbelief" in drama?


And I've seen news reports time to time about football players among other athletes using ballet and similar dance to improve their balance, coordination and rhythm, applying that to improving game performance.

It's okay if you didn't enjoy the film: I just don't believe that the reasons you list are worth such vehemence.

1. The purple pansy with the power to make people fall in love with one another IS in the play - it is Shakespeare's invention - NOT the screenwriters. They simply imbued their story with a secret door into the creation of the magical purple pansy that Shakespeare created for Midsummer.

2. I thought you just said "the love potion does not exist in the play" yet here you are proclaiming what the love potion is "supposed to be." And even though you say the potion "does not exist," it does exist in Midsummer and it was re-invented for the story of this film as a love potion. It just so happens that Timothy never directs it at a heterosexual pairing - that is kind of the whole point. And there is not evidence in the film that it turns anyone - male or female - effeminate. If ballet is your sole criteria for effeminate, you've got a lot to learn about the world. A huge portion of male ballet dancers are heterosexual. Which are the other "absurd things" they suddenly want to do that have anything to do with a "gay-lifestyle"?

3. Similar to #2: I thought you said in #1 that there is no love potion? If you believe there is no love potion, how are you suddenly the expert on what it does and doesn't do? Maybe it is a Shakespeare potion. How do you know? Alas, generally you should probably learn something about what you're talking about before you speak. None of the characters speak "Shakespeare" after being affected by the potion. They occasionally speak a line or two in iambic pentameter.

Being a scholar of Shakespeare, unlike you, these writers DID set up very logical rules based on Midsummer and Shakespeare and they followed them diligently.

Oh! And the band at the end IS the same band that recorded the music you hear in the film. You can see that for yourself in the credits. And they were actually playing along as the scene was shot. You'd learn that if you listened to any of the commentary.

What a pure imbecile.

I mean no disrespect by this, but you do understand the difference between "fantasy" and "science fiction" right? This is a fantasy, not sci-fi. It doesn't have to follow "logical rules". So no, the film does not "suck". It succeeds in telling the story it wants to tell, and many people enjoyed it.

To put it bluntly, you WAAAAAAAY overthought things and missed the entire point.

In the director's commentary, he says there is no potion in the play and that they just made it up. Both Gustafson and Krueckeberg said the movie was loosely based on the play so there isn't any reason to expect it to be otherwise. As far as "logical rules" go, there usually isn't a lot of logic in fairy tales. There wasn't much logic in Cinderella, was there?

Gustafson made it really clear they had very little money to work with so they were forced to go cheap on things like having a real band for the finale. BTW Wendy Robie was not really playing the piano for the "Be As Thou Wast Wont" song.

I feel bad you didn't like the movie but we feel what we feel and that's cool!

1. "The love potion does not exist in the play."
• Actually, the love potion does exist in the play.
• But only his (enchanted) copy of the script tells how to make it.
• Further, did you ever hear of a movie called "Noises Off" about a company rehearsing and performing a play?
—— Or, how about "Kiss Me, Kate" about a troupe performing a musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew"?
—— Neither show is pretending to be a faithful production of the show in question; they are both shows about putting on a show. As is this one.

2. "It's supposed to be a LOVE POTION. Not a gay-lifestyle potion."
• The original (Shakepearean) potion was supposed to make the subject fall in love with the first creature he/she saw on awakening. (Remember, Puck's potion was supposed to be applied while the subject was sleeping.)
• Timothy generally applied his potion where and when the subjects were most likely to first see someone of the same sex.

3. "It makes no sense for the characters who have never read Shakespeare to suddenly spout it simply because they have fallen in love."
• Only those characters who had been rehearsing the play began speaking 16th century English. The others did not.

4. "This movie could have been so much better had it set up logical rules to follow."
• The movie is described as Romance, Comedy, and Fantasy — not Documentary. Fantasy has a skewed logic of its own.

I will leave you to find movies that you do enjoy — and remind those tempted to lambaste you for not enjoying this one that: Nowhere is it carved in stone that everyone has to enjoy all the same movies.

No two persons ever watch the same movie.

being femme is not a 'gay liefstyle' there is not gay 'lifestyle'

'Just remember. I can complete a jigsaw using only my tongue. With the lights out.'

I feel that the OP may not have watched the movie that closely if he missed how the potion was created. The book is enchanted, giving him the power to discover the recipe. There is a moment when he goes back into the book to find the recipe so he can reverse it, and finds nothing but Shakespeare's text, which keeps him stuck in the predicament for the rest of the film. So the film itself acknowledges that the recipe for the potion is not in Shakespeare's text, but only in Timothy's enchanted copy.

As far as the effects of the potion, if you can't stand a bit of adaptation you should never go to the movies.