William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare comedy plays around with love and potions

Keeping in step with Hollywood's current love affair with Shakespeare (the most recent being the Oscar-laden "Shakespeare in Love" and the teen flick, "10 Things I Hate About You," a loose adaptation of "Taming of the Shrew"), Hollywood has once again attempted to make the Bard accessible to the masses with Michael Hoffman's version of the comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Hoffman ("One Fine Day," "Soapdish") achieves this by, quite simply, making us laugh. And with the finely timed comedic performances of, most notably, Kevin Kline and Stanley Tucci, one can't help but do so.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," here set in Tuscany at the end of the 19th century, involves every view of love: those who are deeply in love, those who want to be in love and those who play around with love magically.

As the story begins, Hermia (Anna Friel) and Lysander (Dominic West) flee to the forest. They want to escape Hermia's father, who wishes her to marry Demetrius (Christian Bale). Demetrius is desperately in love with Hermia and attempts to follow her into the woods.

Meanwhile, he is followed by Helena (played by a wonderfully pouty Calista Flockhart). Helena loves Demetrius but he doesn't love her back. And it is here that all chaos results.

As the four lovelorn characters find themselves dangerously close to the secret home of the fairies, Puck (a smug, horned Stanley Tucci) administers a secret love potion to their sleeping eyes, which causes them to fall in love with the first person they see upon waking.

From this point on, love takes a back seat to the humor that is encapsulated in Shakespeare's words.

In a subplot, Bottom (Kevin Kline) and a troupe of actors travel to the same spot in the woods, and Bottom accidentally becomes part of the love war between the King and Queen of the fairies (Rupert Everett and Michelle Pfeiffer).

Kevin Kline shines in this new version of "Dream." He seems to be reprising his Academy award-winning role from 1988's "A Fish Called Wanda," with a 19th century edge. Kline assumes the role as an actor who plays an actor, who not only wants to play the roles offered him but all the roles that aren't. He consistently struggles to be taken seriously, but the harder he tries, the funnier he is.

And though Stanley Tucci is among the lesser-known performers in this movie's entourage of big-name actors and actresses, his subtlety is duly noted. Tucci offers up the famous Shakespeare line, "What fools these mortals be," with refined exasperation. Though he has his share of quips, it's his facial expressions that add most to the role: A wince or roll of his eyes wins laughs every time.

"William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream" is rated PG-13 for brief female nudity (upper), brief male nudity (rear), some instances of implied sex, mild profanity and one instance of sexual humor.