
Shakespeare in Love
Young William Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, 'Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter', before it's even written. When lovely noblewoman Viola de Lesseps auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love — and Shakespeare's play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship intensifies, the comedy soon transforms into tragedy. From TMDB
227 reactions from 4 sources (Bluesky, Mastodon, TMDB reviews, Lemmy) · newest Oct 9, 2026 · last updated Oct 11, 2026 · How this works
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| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bluesky * | 22 | 4 | 34 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| TMDB reviews * | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
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Reactions
60 of 227 · most liked firstRe: Tom Stoppard - I know that most everyone feels that SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was robbed of an Oscar by SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. You can think what you like; I’m not a fan of this debate in general, and I’m a Spielberg guy. But dismissing SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is wrong. It’s a great movie.
positive · AI labelView post →Weinstein, of course, made such edgy, non-mainstream movies without stars like The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Good Will Hunting & Scary Movie 1-5
neutral · AI labelView post →Stoppard also had a huge (and largely unchronicled) film legacy. Obviously, just the work for which he was credited--Shakespeare in Love, Empire of the Sun, Brazil--is major, but he was also one of the most in-demand rewriters, fixers, and polishers in movies. We still don't know everything he did.
neutral · AI labelView post →Fernanda Montenegro in "Central do Brasil" losing the Best Actress Oscar to Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love" might have been one of the most shocking film awards of my entire life. SHOCKING. I'm still not over it. 😩😩😩
neutral · AI labelView post →Shakespeare in Love is a considerably better film than Saving Private Ryan.
positive · AI labelView post →My hottest movie take remains that Shakespeare in Love is a much better film than Saving Private Ryan
positive · AI labelView post →Very sorry to hear about Tom Stoppard. He was easily the most brilliant conservative artist alive yesterday; I can’t imagine his equal. He complicated my ideas about politics. Arcadia and Travesties are perfect and Shakespeare in Love is still a better movie than Saving Private Ryan.
positive · AI labelView post →Simply one of the best writers in the English language of the last 100 years. No equal. So many things I loved had his fingerprints all over it. You want my hot take? Shakespeare In Love was the best movie that came out that year. It wasn't close.
positive · AI labelView post →This week's last 4 Shakespeare in Love (1998) St. Ives (1976) Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) The Unborn (1991) #letterboxdfriday #letterboxd #lastfourwatched #filmsky
neutral · AI labelView post →Shakespeare in Love is the better film.
positive · AI labelView post →... when a relative told him that all four of his Jewish grandparents had been murdered by Nazis. He also won a screenwriting Oscar for the 1998 film “Shakespeare in Love.”
neutral · AI labelView post →Shakespeare in Love film club time!! Excited to be here, please post along with us with the hashtag #SiL
neutral · AI labelView post →It's not worth getting big mad that Oppenheimer, a fine film and Nolan's best (only good?) movie, won a bunch of awards even if better films were made and nominated last year. I'm happy any time the Academy even hits the dartboard. I remember Shakespeare in Love
neutral · AI labelView post →SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1965) #lostfilmsofhollywood linkly.link/2hi5J @quantick.bsky.social
neutral · AI labelView post →Oh god. A sublime writer. R&G is perfection, Arcadia is exquisite, and Shakespeare in Love remains the best movie about WS ever made. Safe travels, Tom.
positive · AI labelView post →A man goes to the doctor. “Doctor, I’m depressed." The doctor says “Check out the Academy Award winning feature film Shakespeare in Love. Gwyneth Paltrow gets her tits out."
neutral · AI labelView post →Happy Birthday, legend Judi Dench, 12/9/34. Degenerative eye sight keeps her sidelined, but impressive body of theater, TV & film endures. 8 Oscar nods 97 Mrs Brown 98 Shakespeare in Love (win) 00 Chocolat 01 Iris 05 Mrs Henderson Presents 06 Notes on a Scandal 13 Philomena 21 Belfast #filmsky 📽
neutral · AI labelView post →It’s unfortunate that Shakespeare In Love is tainted by the Weinstein association but it’s still a gem of a (Stoppard-written) movie.
positive · AI labelView post →You are correct. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is an excellently written film. Tom Stoppard also co-wrote BRAZIL and did uncredited work on SLEEPY HOLLOW, so he deserves everyone's respect as far as I'm concerned. Godspeed, sir.
positive · AI labelView post →Saving Private Ryan, a widely misunderstood film, deserved Best Picture over Shakespeare in Love, and maybe even The Thin Red Line
negative · AI labelView post →Shakespeare in Love-my favorite movie
positive · AI labelView post →He also co-wrote the freewheeling dystopian Terry Gilliam film Brazil (1985) and won an Academy Award for the screenplay of 1998 film Shakespeare In Love.
neutral · AI labelView post →We keep saying “I too enjoyed the film Ever After/A Knight’s Tale/Shakespeare in Love/etc”
neutral · AI labelView post →Review of the Week: Hamnet Chloé Zhao’s Bard drama with its powerhouse lead performance from Jessie Buckley is hotly tipped for success. But is it just a deluxe version of Shakespeare in Love? writes @ellenejones.bsky.social www.thenerve.news/p/review-ham...
neutral · AI labelView post →Not only was Saving Private Ryan a better and more historically significant film, the main reason Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture was because Harvey Weinstein went on a behind-the-scenes awards campaign for the film. Yes. *That* Harvey Weinstein
negative · AI labelView post →Watching SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE on telly. A really good film that many people online inexplicably think is a really bad film.
positive · AI labelView post →#NovemberMovieChallenge #MovieSky Day 8. An author in a movie. Shakespeare In Love (1998)
neutral · AI labelView post →What fun to go to the movies with Jason and get AWFULLY nitpicky about Shakespeare in Love - a film which I still adore, despite everything.
positive · AI labelView post →one time on twitter i was talking to someone about r-rated movies and i mentioned that the first one i saw was Shakespeare in Love "which in hindsight is funny because it was so tame" and then a random person showed up to yell at me bc the first r-rated movie THEY saw gave them trauma
neutral · AI labelView post →Shakespeare In Love. Best comic relief in that movie, pretty good Mercutio, and apparently the reason Will included the post-coital scene. 😜
neutral · AI labelView post →The quintessential Miramax Oscar movie “Shakespeare in Love” grossed nearly $300M
neutral · AI labelView post →I mention rewatching Shakespeare in Love. (Stoppard co-wrote the screenplay.) Husband wrinkles his nose and says “all the smarty-smart girls in college loved that movie.” I said bitch what do you think I was
positive · AI labelView post →2025 watch #175: Shakespeare in Love. I disliked this movie at the time because of how aggressively '90s it was in spite of its period setting, and now I find myself charmed by it for that same reason. Time is a funny thing.
neutral · AI labelView post →Listen this is a side point from the bad OBAA take but people need to fucking stop with Shakespeare in Love as a go to movie that shouldn't have won. It's not even in the top 10 worst best picture wins and Green Book is right there.
neutral · AI labelView post →✨Shakespeare in Love✨ Great article about a literary (playwright) and film legend. Tom Stoppard. 🌹✨
neutral · AI labelView post →There is a genre of movie that is "if you were alone in a hotel room and it came on you would keep watching it" Examples are: Indiana Jones, Brendan Fraiser's The Mummy, Fifth Element, Shakespeare in Love, Star Wars iv-vi What are other examples?
neutral · AI labelView post →Shakespeare in Love was on tv and I had to watch. I think I saw that three times in the theaters. It had my heart after having survived a truly difficult year. It was the right film for a girl turning 19. I am still very fond of it.
positive · AI labelView post →I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Shakespeare In Love may not have deserved the Best Picture Oscar over Saving Private Ryan, but that does NOT mean it wasn’t still a lovely, well crafted movie.
positive · AI labelView post →Movie Night mit Kindchen: Shakespeare in Love 📽
neutral · AI labelView post →Saving Private Ryan - Saw it when it came out at the theater. I left stunned. I can't watch it again. I have tried. Also Shakespeare in Love and Blade Runner (1982). Forbidden Planet or any 50s monster movie.
neutral · AI labelView post →I will note that Mom's theory predated the movie Shakespeare In Love by a good decade.
neutral · AI labelView post →"Shakespeare in Love" gets hate but it's not a terrible movie (and, if we're being honest, isn't any worse than "Saving Private Ryan" or "Life is Beautiful"). It's just aggressively average. Now "Crash" is actually bad, like fellow Best Picture winners "The Greatest Show on Earth" and "Cimarron".
neutral · AI labelView post →I have to agree. I enjoyed both Sinners and OBAA, but they're not even in the same league. I also enjoyed Shakespeare in Love, but it was not the best movie of the year. And Crash?🙄 What a joke. I'm not even a horror or vampire genre fan, but Sinners was incredible. Truly a masterpiece.
positive · AI labelView post →That movie fucking created Goop. We can blame Shakespeare in Love for the permanence of Gwyneth Paltrow. Movie has a lot to fucking answer for, honestly
negative · AI labelView post →A lot of mine have already been covered: West Side Story 10 Things Branaugh’s Much Ado Hoffman’s Midsummer R + J Shakespeare in Love (not an adaptation but SORT OF) holds a place in my heart, as does Slings and Arrows. I’m sticking to film, if we wanna talk stagings the list is much longer.
positive · AI labelView post →Someone on Reddit picked Shakespeare in Love as the most overrated “classic Hollywood film”and I aged 200 years right then
neutral · AI labelView post →Shakespeare in Love is an utterly preposterous and completely wonderful film.
positive · AI labelView post →Having finally won a Best Director Oscar in 1994 for Schindler’s List, Spielberg won his second Best Director Oscar for Saving Private Ryan. The film missed out on Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love, which took home 7 awards. 34/36
neutral · AI labelView post →#HappyNewYear! Our goal is to celebrate the great movies that mean a lot to us. And to kick things off, we invite you to join @baddestmamajama.bsky.social & @nomadicwriter.bsky.social on Jan. 12th for their live tweeting of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE! 🎞️😍 #scriptsky #filmsky #filmchat #shakespeare
neutral · AI labelView post →My run over recovery film watch continues with a rewatch (for 1st time since the 90s!) of Shakespeare in Love, which I remembered as a caper but this time - insomniac at 1 am - found surprisingly melancholic
neutral · AI labelView post →I watched Saving Private Ryan for the first time in 28 years today and like…it’s not perfect or anything, but for anyone to have decided Shakespeare in Love was the better film ought to be a crime punishable by years of film school
negative · AI labelView post →I like the picture, but Drugstore Cowboy was not a good movie to watch on a date. Shakespeare in Love on the other hand….
positive · AI labelView post →I really think that the Shakespeare in Love hate is straight up misogyny bc how could an insanely clever and well shot *woman’s movie* beat out a big WWII film
positive · AI labelView post →Dame Judi Dench, stage and screen actress and all-round national treasure, was born in Yorkshire on 9 December 1934. She is best known for her Shakespearean repertoire. Her film roles include Shakespeare in Love, Mrs Brown, and several James Bond films where she played M.
neutral · AI labelView post →Mostly Hamnet made me want to rewatch Shakespeare In Love, a perfect movie whose ending makes me shake with the need to make something.
positive · AI labelView post →#Edwards2026MovieThingChallenge #MovieSky #FilmSky #MarchMovieChallenge Mar-27 Movie character who is a theater actor or actress Shakespeare in Love (1998) Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps
neutral · AI labelView post →I remember the eyebrows raised when Saving Private Ryan lost BP to the fluff of Shakespeare In Love; I wonder if there was a similar reaction at the 1949 Oscars #OTD when Hamlet got BP over Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. I’m a big fan of Olivier’s moody film so I approve; but Madre has its fans too
neutral · AI labelView post →Tom Stoppard, the five-time Tony Award-winning playwright, who co-wrote the 1998 film ‘Shakespeare in Love’, has died at 88. You will be missed, Tom. #RIPTomStoppard
neutral · AI labelView post →With Tom Stoppard's passing, maybe folks can enthuse about what a wonderful film Shakespeare in Love is rather than refer to it as 'that film that stole the Oscar from Saving Private Ryan.'
neutral · AI labelView post →As a theater kid who was not yet a film nerd, all I knew was that I *must* see Shakespeare in Love (as my theater teacher insisted) and I spent the whole time with a stupid grin on my face from how much I was enjoying and only when this credit appeared did I realize (and say aloud) "ah, that's why."
positive · AI labelView post →
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