Will they or won't they?

Last night I went to a sneak preview of "Anonymous," a big-budget
costume drama about William Shakespeare. It was directed by Roland
Emmerich of "Independence Day" fame and is just like "Independence
Day," except instead of aliens invading New York City, a bunch of
really good plays invade London.

Emmerich personally is of the belief that Shakespeare was not the
author of the plays that bear his name, and "Anonymous" espouses the
view of the Oxfordian faction of people with Shakespeare authorship
issues -- that is, proposes that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays
and, for a couple of reasons, pawned them off on an illiterate actor.
The film will apparently also be accompanied by classroom materials
and a documentary about Shakespearean authorship. (At the screening
last night, Emmerich wore a broad grin and insistently repeated to the
Shakespeare scholar he was paired with, who was indignant at the
movie's flippancy with the facts, "I am not a scholar, but...")

"Anonymous" is packed with ponderous line readings, confusing
intrigues and unconvincing false facial hair. The snippets of plays,
lines and scenarios from Shakespeare (spoiler: someone gets stabbed
Polonius-style) are the best thing about it, including appearances by
the well-regarded Shakespearean actor Mark Rylance as Richard Burbage.
Nor did it convince me to that side of the authorship controversy,
although I wouldn't say people who question Shakespeare as Shakespeare
need to be thrown out of the establishment. (There is some mystery
there.) And yet I am tempted to go easy on it simply because it
exists. It's not as if we get lit-major conspiracy blockbusters every
year, and I'd rather watch a bad movie about Shakespeare than most
other genres of bad movie.

That said, I'm not sure what this movie's audience is -- fans of
Emmerich's last movie (2012, if I recall correctly) probably aren't
interested in period costumes, British royals or actors who aren't
John Cusack. If this is the director's frivolous years-to-fruition
passion project (or one he adopted from a screenwriter, as the Q and A
suggested), maybe I have more in common than I would have thought with
the guy who drowned the New York Public Library in "The Day After
Tomorrow."