Melodramatic ham that he is, seldom lets a minute go by in his screen adaptations of Shakespeare without some kind of musical accompaniment. is a shameless enabler for 's music addiction, dealing out 24 tracks worth of sticky sweet orchestrations to satisfy the director's jones. was 's second Shakespeare film, and at the time of its release his ebullient directorial style seemed radiant and charming. The film was widely regarded as a magnificently robust Hollywood popularization of one of the Bard's cheekiest comedies. But 's unwinking earnestness began to wear thin in later efforts like and , making seem somewhat light weight in retrospect. 's contribution is nevertheless suitably sweeping and frothy, even if it does borrow rather too liberally from his previous (and superior) compositions for . As usual, 's greatest work comes in vocal tracks like the dirge-like choral passage and the winsome musical setting for Shakespeare's poem which receives a beautiful reading in the opening credits by the incomparable . These help to compensate for the egregiously swollen romantic pieces that underscore ridiculous shots of a lovestruck splashing around in Venetian fountains. ~ Evan Cater