Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

malmborgimplano-92-599820 After reading the recent review taking people who rated this film highly to task, I decided to go back and rephrase my own post. I also knocked my rating down to 7, which I hate to do because I'm a hardcore fan of the Yonderlanders*, but I also don't want to disappoint people who come to Bill expecting Monty Python and the Holy Grail and are horribly disappointed. No, the Yonderlanders aren't Monty Python. Having a comedic style evolved from performing together in a BBC educational children's show rather than from Oxbridge revues, and being young enough to be the Pythons' grandkids, their style of humor is more millennial: more sharply focused and socially responsible. This film is probably not the best introduction to the art of the Yonderlanders. It's much slower and more structured than their TV work. Horrible Histories is a slam-bang Sesame Street-style variety show, and Yonderland reminds me of nothing so much as an updated version of the classic Harvey Kurtzman era Mad Comics, packed with so many gags you need to study them with a magnifying glass to catch them all. I think established fans of the Yonderlanders' work will like this and "get" it in a way newcomers probably won't. *my term for the core group of performer-writers in large part responsible for the brilliant first five seasons of the live action Horrible Histories franchise, who later branched out on their own with the phenomenal comedy series Yonderland and feature film Bill: Matt Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard, and Ben Willbond.

Eoin Brosnan A very entertaining, irreverent take on how Shakespeare rose to fame. It's really quite silly but on the same hand quite consistent with its own internal logic. (Unlike say Pan or Prometheus which are both a narrative mess where characters completely flip- flop for no other reason than the writer was too thick or lazy to find another way to progress the plot)King Phillip II of Spain is a joyously dickish main antagonist with some great one liners. Sir Francis Walsingham is just bizarre and Bill himself is charmingly gormless.The film left me with a smile on my face and kinda wishing I got a few more of the Shakespeare references. It also has me randomly blurting out 'King Phillip the Second of Spain' on occasion. Well done Team Horrible Histories!

Neil Welch There are to be peace talks between Queen Elizabeth I and King Phillip of Spain. Elizabeth wants to impress Phillip by presenting a play and the Earl of Croydon (or is it Crawley) foolishly offers his services while drunk. Fortunately, playwright William Shakespeare has just arrived in London to seek his fortune.There is a UK TV series, based on a series of kids' books, called Horrible Histories, and this is the first cinema outing for the repertory team behind that series: as with (for instance) the Monty Python team, most of the parts are played by the same handful of actors, with cameos from Damien Lewis and Helen McCrory.What we have is a "what might have been" story, packed with gags, most of which are a combination of silly and clever and based on anachronism (Shakespeare starts off as a member of a mandolin group called the Mortal Coils, sacked when he plays a modern guitar solo on his mandolin during a madrigal. After awkward goodbyes, one member of the group says "Well, we'll shuffle off then.") The anachronistic humour plays happily against the well realised period look of the piece – locations, costumes and sets all have a pleasingly authentic look to them.Sitting in a (sadly) empty cinema, I giggled throughout this.

littlewritingmachine Anyone who has studied history, and that's just about everyone, will find something to enjoy in Bill, a big screen leap for the popular TV team that expands the scope of the show without letting go of the good humour and wit beloved by millions.Taking a cue from Shakespeare in Love, but playing the idea of the Bard's formative years in a very different way, Bill features Mathew Bayton as the young playwright, seeking his fortune in London and falling under the wing of Christopher Marlowe (Jim Howick). The historical aspect is brought to the fore as King Phillip II (Ben Willbond) concocts a scheme to eliminate Queen Elizabeth I (Helen McCrory) by gunpowder, with Bill's first play giving him a pretext to carry out his plan. Bill's excitement about seeing his work brought to the stage is tempered by a dawning realisation that he's only a pawn in a bigger political game.Bill might well work for worldwide audiences as a cheerful parody of Shakespeare in Love, but has its own sense of comic invention. It's refreshing to see a British film with such spirited performances, with Willbond sporting several moustaches at once and his co-writer Laurence Rickard superbly deadpan as the violently anti-Catholic Walsingham. Bill never dumbs down history, but reflects it through amusingly modern updates; the castle security go to Code Woad when the believe there's a high risk of attack, and Phillip's men are subject to a search by a decidedly modern customs officer. Damien Lewis has a brief but amusing cameo, and all the performers are on point; you can tell that they've got confidence in the material, and they wring every possible laugh from it. Sneaking into cinemas with barely a breath of publicity, Bill should find a wide and appreciative audience once it finds a home on the small screen; carefully plotted and with genuine wit behind the gags, it's the best British comedy of the year. That may not be saying much, given that big-screen comedy is seemingly a lost art, but Bill is just the thing to put a rare smile on the faces of adults and children alike.