SWEET SILLINESS

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE TIME IS CHRISTMAS. THE PLACE, a disused church deep in the English provinces. The characters, half a dozen profoundly marginalized show folks determined to put on a play. Not just any play, mind you--Hamlet is what Joe Harper (Michael Maloney), their director-producer-star, has maxed out his credit cards to mount.

Movies like this used to have lots of singing and dancing, not to mention Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. But if you love show-biz fables in which the desperate improvisations of sweet-souled egomaniacs are rewarded by improbable last-minute success, writer-director Kenneth Branagh's A Midwinter's Tale is a very acceptable update. Especially if you like Woody Allen too. For Branagh has adopted a number of Allen's mannerisms: shooting in black and white, using old songs for the score--in this case, frugally, just one song, Noel Coward's great anti-show biz anthem, Why Must the Show Go On?

Branagh also shares with Allen a belief that actorly self-absorption is a dish best served cold sober. How sublimely unconscious of their own silliness are Nicholas Farrell's Tom, engaged to play Laertes, but full of intellectual pretense ("Hamlet is Bosnia..."), and Julia Sawalha's Ophelia, stumbling about because she refuses to wear glasses onstage. Joan Collins does such a nice turn as a high-powered agent that one fancies she might make a go of acting if writing novels continues to sour for her. Branagh sometimes sacrifices bite to the sentiment so endemic to show biz. But this bustling, affectionately knowing film is never slow biz.

--By Richard Schickel