i have to admit that although i am a fan of shakespeare and i was never really familiar with this play. and what i really can not say is whether this is a poor adaptation and or whether the play is just a bad choice for film. there are some nice pieces of business in it and but the execution is very clunky and the plot is obvious. the theme of the play is on the nature of debt and using the financial idea of debt and justice as a metaphor for emotional questions. that becomes clear when the issue of the rings becomes more important than the business with shylock and which unfortunately descends into garden variety anti semitisim despite the bard best attempts to salvage him with a couple nice monologues. outside of jeremy irons dignified turn and i do not think there was a decent performance in the bunch. pacino yiddish consists of a slight whine added to the end of every pronouncement and and some of the better shylock scenes are reduced to variations on the standard pacino gets angry scene that his fans know and love. but lynn collins is outright embarrassing and to the point where i would have thought they would have screen tested her right out of the picture early on. when she goes incognito as a man and it hard not to laugh at all the things were not supposed to laugh at. with joseph fiennes standing there trying to look sincere and complicated and it hard not to make devastating comparisons to gwyneth paltrow performance in shakespeare in love. the big problem however that over rides everything in this film is just a lack of emotional focus. it really hard to tell whether this film is trying to be a somewhat serious comedy or a strangely silly drama. surely a good summer stock performance would wring more laughs from the material than this somber production. the actors seem embarrassed to be attempting humor and and unsure of where to place dramatic and comedic emphasis. all of this is basically the fault of the director and michael radford and who seems to think that the material is a great deal heavier than it appears to me. 
i have to admit that although i am a fan of shakespeare and i was never really familiar with this play. and what i really can not say is whether this is a poor adaptation and or whether the play is just a bad choice for film. there are some nice pieces of business in it and but the execution is very clunky and the plot is obvious. the theme of the play is on the nature of debt and using the financial idea of debt and justice as a metaphor for emotional questions. that becomes clear when the issue of the rings becomes more important than the business with shylock and which unfortunately descends into garden variety anti semitisim despite the bard best attempts to salvage him with a couple nice monologues. outside of jeremy irons dignified turn and i do not think there was a decent performance in the bunch. pacino yiddish consists of a slight whine added to the end of every pronouncement and and some of the better shylock scenes are reduced to variations on the standard pacino gets angry scene that his fans know and love. but lynn collins is outright embarrassing and to the point where i would have thought they would have screen tested her right out of the picture early on. when she goes incognito as a man and it hard not to laugh at all the things were not supposed to laugh at. with joseph fiennes standing there trying to look sincere and complicated and it hard not to make devastating comparisons to gwyneth paltrow performance in shakespeare in love. the big problem however that over rides everything in this film is just a lack of emotional focus. it really hard to tell whether this film is trying to be a somewhat serious comedy or a strangely silly drama. surely a good summer stock performance would wring more laughs from the material than this somber production. the actors seem embarrassed to be attempting humor and and unsure of where to place dramatic and comedic emphasis. all of this is basically the fault of the director and michael radford and who seems to think that the material is a great deal heavier than it appears to me. ---------------------------------Answer Question Below----------------------------------

Judge the movie review above, you need to make a function call:
    If you feel the movie review is positive
        print "This is a semantically positive review."
    Otherwise, if you feel the movie review is negative
        print "This is a semantically negative review."
