Watch the New Trailer for Roland Emmerich's Anonymous: Shakespeare in the Dark

As your ninth grade English teacher once explained to you with an air of fake intrigue, William Shakespeare may not have written all of his works. Scandal! In the trailer for Roland Emmerich's new Anonymous, that theory plays out in a full period-piece drama. And like you in ninth grade, Anonymous is not aware of how overwrought it is.

I always have mixed feelings about movies that don't realize they're campy. Did you also chafe just slightly when Vanessa Redgrave clucked, "None of your poems or your plays will ever carry your name!" like a graceless Dame Edith Evans? I thought she was going to follow up with, "A dingo ATE YOUR PLAYS!" Surely the conspiracy and doubt surrounding Shakespeare's legacy is worthy of a cinematic re-inspection, but I'm not quite sure if Masterpiece Theatre schlock is the best way to do it. Trust me, I appreciate hollers of "Charlatan!" just like the next megafan of Elizabethan melodrama; it's just that the trailer's overacting, overselling, and ridiculous use of Radiohead jaundices its eye candy for me. What's next, a big-screen adaptation of The Cherry Orchard with "Fake Plastic Trees" playing nonstop? Let's have some decorum here!

VERDICT: The Drama of Errors

[via Coming Soon]