Let the Devil Wear Black [1999] + The Lion King [1994]

Welcome back to My Year of Shakespeare. It's been a rough past five weeks. I haven't found a lot of be complimentary about in the movies I've chosen. That changes this week.

Despite being closest in adaptational lineage to China Girl (by which I mean: this is a braindead tough guy adaptation, the kind of movie Christopher Moltisanti would've made), I had a great time with Let the Devil Wear Black. I think the actors rose to the demands the script had for them, even if it was a little undercooked, and made something really fun here. The supporting cast of now-higher-profile character actors — Norman Reedus, Mary Louise Parker, Jonathan Banks, Philip Baker Hall, and Jamey Sheridan — perform admirably. I'm not sure who Jonathan Penner is - imdb says he was in that slenderman movie from a few years ago and has written on a couple things - but he does a pretty good job in the lead role.

I watched this basically immediately after hitting "publish" on the '96 Hamlet writeup and the elation I had at this clocking in at 89 minutes cannot be understated. I needed something dumb that did not overstay its welcome, that didn't feel like homework. So much from the '96 adaptation was excised, it was so streamlined, it largely didn't keep the dialogue and yknow what? It was better for it.

Also of note - the soundtrack was a lot of 90s also-ran trip hop group Baby Fox, and it was pretty good. I am slightly biased here as trip hop is one of my favorite genres to listen to, and I was not expecting it, so it was a pleasant surprise.

I think if you were going to do a "modern" version of King Lear, having it set with a crime family in 70s/80s New York or 90s/00s Los Angeles would be the way to do it; You couldn't really do a "teen shakespeare" version of that (although mayyyybe if it were like, someone who is the head of the student council for four years and hands off the reigns to her juniors? almost a Mean Girls vibe?) but the "tough guy shakespeare" mode can absolutely accommodate that play. Maybe I just like the 90s/00s depictions of LA being seedy, like in the second The Crow or Collateral. I think it does seedy better than other places; or maybe it just does depictions of being seedy better. I'll have to chew on that a little.

Let me be clear, a lot of this movie was oversimplification of the play. But sometimes the simple form works. Sometimes you let the adaptation take its adaptational diversions and watch how it ties them back in. This movie has more than a couple haters on rotten tomatoes (26% popcorn meter) or imdb (4.9/10 stars) and maybe that's an earned reputation among Shakespeare scholars, but I think the shots look great, I think the acting is competent, I think the script is maybe a little weak, but give me this over a heinous cgi movie any day. Doubly so if that's also a shakespeare adaptation.

And now to the softball, The Lion King. In a move that will surprise no-one, an untrained viewer (me) finds that a movie he grew up with "still rips".

But actually, yeah, it does. The voice performances are fantastic - Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane, James Earl Jones, even Rowan Atkinson, perfect performances. The Hans Zimmer / Elton John score/soundtrack? Still rips. The animation, especially that Bubsy Berkeley sequence? They were cooking. Like quite possibly The Best To Ever Do It, in terms of traditional 2D animation; this and 90s anime, the form never looked better. The model doesn't hold up to forever-scrutiny due to hauntologies, ideological recursion, and capitalism always trying to find a cheaper way, but judging from this combined with animation as it existed before, you understand how there was a perception of linear progress in animation, a sense of "everything building to this".

Is it Shakespeare? Sure. Is it Hamlet? The Folger argues - and, peek behind the curtain, I've been watching ahead a little and agree - that there's also a significant chunk of Henry IV in here, particularly the parts where Prince Hal abandons his duties to go fart around with his deeply irresponsible friends. We love a relatable king. We'll cover more of that in September [alongside the "live action" Lion King remake].

Which is all to say, I had a great time revisiting this, it sounded better than I remembered, looked better than I remembered, and still entertains as an adult seeing the movie for possibly the thousandth time [but first in at least a decade].

Next week, we're watching Hamlet (2000) with Ethan Hawke and (breaking sequence a little here since it is "Romeo-and-Juliet-inspired") The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. Thank you for reading along with My Year of Shakespeare.