Whedon's Much Ado (2013): The best contemporary version you'll ever see

I'm not sure if Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing is or will be the definitive version of this Shakespeare play for our time, but I am sure that it's the best contemporary adaptation of the play you're ever likely to see and it's one of the most likable and credible presentations of this play in which, by and large, the characters are superficially brilliant but hollow at the core (the "nothing" of the title). The two leads, Beatrice and Benedick, are so smart and funny that it's easy to think of them as the whole show - and to forget or ignore that most of the other characters behave in absolutely despicable if not idiotic ways: renouncing a bride at the altar because you think you've seen her having a tryst with another guy, engaging in some ludicrous scheme of pretending the bride (Hero) is dead and coaxing her betrothed (Claudio) to marry her "cousin" sight unseen... and so forth - nobody behaves this way. So how to make it credible? And, if you're to have a contemporary version of the play, how do you deal with the setting - soldiers coming back from a peaceful little war in which few died "and none of name"? Whedon has the brilliant idea of setting this on a SoCal estate and making it a movie about a very well-heeled gang of mobsters - the returning "soldiers" obviously just cleaned up some kind of mess with a rival gang in another state, and now come in to report to the head of the clan. Everyone's well dressed and well spoken - this is not the Sopranos, but a much smoother, slicker mob scene - and everything takes off from there. The two leads, esp Amy Acker as Beatrice, are completely winning; Dogberry, understated rather than over the top, by far the funniest I have ever seen - thanks also to his fellow "constables," a bumbling local police force (except for the woman) in way over their heads when dealing with the big-shots. Great use of interior space in the sprawling Santa Monica home (I'm told the director's actual home), and excellent score, including two songs using Sh. lyrics. The secondary characters all are fine, very much looking the part - young stars on the rise, stoner on the fringe, etc. ; casting Conrade (villain Don John's sidekick) as a "babe" is really a good decision. This production isn't notable for any single line delivery - though one very fine clip occurs when Claudio says he will marry the "cousin" unseen, even if she were "an Ethiope" - and in that moment we see in the background, among the wedding guests, a young black woman - just for one second, but great - showing Claudio's shallowness right there. In fact, Claudio becomes a more important character here than he usually is - has some great lines, and we really see the callowness of his behavior throughout. The great production from the 1970s with Sam Waterston's Benedick still remains for me the gold standard - who can ever forget "Will you have me, lady?" or "Kill Claudio" or "We'll have dancing afterwards" - but this contemporary Much Ado brings the play into our day and time better than any before - and likely any ever.