Shakespeare-as-fraud is one of the more popular conspiracy theories out there, but please, for the love of God, don't go into Roland Emmerich's Anonymous expecting some kind of enlightenment or, worse, concrete evidence that the naysayers speak truth. Historical value is about the last thing on this movie's mind; it's a lavish, sporadically entertaining soap opera that's remarkable more for its set design than anything else. The movie captures a genuinely stuffy, grimy feel; gone is the glossy romanticism of something like Shakespeare In Love and in its place is a dark, dimly lit U.K. where the slums are squeamishly vibrant and the palace halls are drearily still. The message here, it seems, is that the street urchins tend to have all the fun.
Alas, though, there's two hours of this movie to get through, and apart from that wonderful production design, the rest of it is awfully hit-or-miss. The actors push far and away too hard in their roles; by the time a young Queen Elizabeth I (Joely Richardson) screeches "I LOVE HIM!!!!" in another character's face, it's clear that the movie -- as is Emmerich's wont, since he's the thinking man's Michael Bay -- has more or less checked any pretensions of subtlety at the door (Anonymous's clever framing device actually does provide a reasonable context for some of its hammier moments, but still). The movie, though admirably ambitious, is also too long by about a half an hour. Its plot is a huge, ungainly thing that jumps back and forth through time (including brief excursions into the present day), breaches the fourth wall, and attempts to combine historical drama and sweeping, forbidden romance set against a tale of political intrigue and deceit.
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