YMMV / Shakespeare in Love

• Comedy Ghetto: The last comedy to win Best Picture until the Black Comedy Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which came out in 2014, and Everything Everywhere All at Once, which came out in 2022. This film was released in 1998.
• Common Knowledge: The film winning Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan is usually viewed as an upset, but it was actually the expected outcome based on pure probability.
• Critical Backlash: The movie is considered a good production, just not one to win a particularly stacked year for the Academy Awards because its producer lobbied hard and dirty for it.
• Fandom Rivalry: An infamous one with Saving Private Ryan, which Weinstein' campaign sought to discredit and beat in what's widely seen as an Award Snub.
• Genius Bonus:
  • In Ned Alleyn's introductory scene, he enthusiastically rattles off a list of leading roles that he's played in Marlowe's plays, then dismissively adds that he also played King Henry VI when he notices Shakespeare in earshot. If you're familiar with the Henry VI trilogy, you can understand why Ned might not think highly of the role: Henry VI is a glorified side character in the play named for him, as the play is actually about the fracturing of the English nobility in the Wars of the Roses; Henry had almost no notable accomplishments to his name, and he's largely remembered as the incompetent weakling who allowed England to descend into Civil War because he couldn't control his nobles.
  • Other than Romeo and Juliet, the three Shakespeare plays explicitly referenced in this film are Two Gentlemen of Verona (which the actors are shown performing), Henry VI and Titus Andronicus (which are both mentioned in dialogue). If you're familiar with the timeline of Shakespeare's career, this should immediately make it clear that the movie takes place at an early point in his life. Scholars generally agree that those are three of Shakespeare's earliest plays, and that one of them was probably the very first play he ever wrote (though it's almost impossible to know which one).^note Dating is rather inexact, since most plays in the Elizabethan era weren't actually published until long after they were written and after they had already been performed for years. But by comparing the plays and analyzing their composition, scholars have at least managed to develop a rough idea of which plays came first.
  • Every trope that happens in this movie — Sweet Polly Oliver, King Incognito, etc. — refers to similar tropes that pop up (often repeatedly) in Shakespeare's plays.
  • Shakespeare is introduced practicing his signature. His actual signature is notoriously hard to pin down, with six examples from legal documents generally agreed to be authentic, and all of which have significant differences.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Earldom of Wessex hadn't existed for nine hundred years when this movie came out with a fictional Lord Wessex as the villain; a year after the film's release, Prince Edward was created Earl of Wessex on his marriage.
  • Likewise, Geoffrey Rush's eagerness to do a play about pirates.
  • This isn’t the last time Judi Dench will play another woman with an impact on Shakespeare’s life and career.
• Narm: Lampshaded.
  "Gentlemen, good e'en! A woorrrrd with one of you!"
  "...are you going to do it like that?"
• One-Scene Wonder: Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I. Six minutes of screentime total, and one entirely deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: If this film is mentioned today, it's for Miramax's infamous Oscar campaign and the eventual perceived upset wins in multiple categories, including Best Picture, against Saving Private Ryan and Elizabeth. It also doesn't help that Harvey Weinstein was later fired from his own company for sexual harassment, with Gwyneth Paltrow among his victims. Every picture of her awkwardly smiling next to him at the Academy Awards paints this movie's campaign in an even more uncomfortable light.
• Tear Jerker: Will and Viola parting at the end, never to meet again.
  Will: You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: There was some controversy at the time of the film's release due to its alleged similarity to the mid-20th-century novel No Bed For Bacon by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon.

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