Casanova

I saw Casanova Friday. I give it a Bad. I felt like it had a good opportunity to be something decent. The story was sort of a madcap, zany, Gilbert and Sullivan type mistaken identities farce. Unfortunately, the realization of the potential never occurred. The first thing I noticed (which might be an indication of just how bad it was if I actually found it distracting) was the makeup. It was terrible. Heath Ledger looked like he had weird eyes the whole time. His eyebrows were also very screwy. Lena Olin looked goofy a lot, and the wigs were terrible also. Most notably Jeremy Irons flattop/tightly curled mullet was ridiculous. His performance in general was also a little over the top. He was meant to be the harsh bad guy who gets played for a buffoon in the end, but his typical Jeremy-Irons-as-bad-guy, seen in Diehard 3 and The Time Machine, among others, was too much. He certainly has ability, but his role here was completely overdone. I wonder if he was uninterested, or if the direction was terrible. In any case, there was just a bit too much about this movie that seemed disjointed. It was like there were too many people pulling in too many different directions, the script had Gilbert and Sullivan in mind, the actors had something else in mind, the makeup had cheap farce in mind, the director maybe had something else. There were some good performances, Oliver Platt was fun, as was Omid Djalili as Casanova's butler. But they were overshadowed by the rest of the mess. Oh well.