Harry Cason

(On Cable TV, April 2020) The Bard’s work is appropriate for all seasons and cultures, even a straight-to-TV take set in Hawaii… wait, what? Well, yes, A Midsummer’s Hawaiian Dream takes the Shakespearian comedy, chops off a lot of the subplots, recontextualizes it to modern-day Hawaii and doesn’t really break the bank for a budget. Let’s be fair: the film is set in utterly spectacular Hawaiian scenery and never misses an occasion to shoot outdoors—just stunning stuff, to the point where I was just happy just taking in the background footage. When it comes to TV rom-coms, this film’s scenery is in a class of its own. The rest, however… well, let’s give one to the bard: the plot is fine. What’s not so fine is what they do with the plot, especially when it comes to dialogue (either spoken or tortured into pseudo-Shakespearian) or cutting away nearly all of the supernatural to focus on the romantic. What’s worse is the common failure point of such TV movies: the good-looking actors aren’t the best, and the director (Harry Cason, who also co-wrote) is not really handing them effectively: we are far, far away from Shakespearian acting, as nothing is subtle and everything is broad enough to play to people half-listening. Still, A Midsummer’s Hawaiian Dream may be blunt and rough and cheap but it does have the advantage of being just fun enough to be likable. There are plenty of better versions of the same story elsewhere, but it could be worse than being stuck with this one.