Alicia I love this movie so much

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

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

Gypsi Bates Lizzie Buckingham (Felicity Kendal) is the teen-aged daughter of a roving acting couple (played by her real life parents, Geoffrey Kendal and Laura Liddell) in India during the 1960s. Lizzie falls in love with Sanju (Shashi Kapoor) who seems to reciprocate her feelings, but he is also having an affair with the jealous actress Manjula (Madhur Jaffrey).Loosely based on the true life of the Kendal family, this second collaboration of Merchant, Ivory, and Jhabvala is perfection. The cast is talented and natural, the plot believable and beautifully written, the film-work graceful and personal. The Shakespeare references may be problematic for some, but regardless, I recommend this movie whole-heartedly.

Thereelmag Trm I don't remember any other movie where story was largely based on a family/set of people and they acted in it. Do you remember any movie? Shakespeare Wallah, loosely based on Kendal family, is one such example. Bollywood knows this family by virtue of their strong bond with the Kapoors. Jennifer – wife of Shashi Kapoor – was a Shakespeare Wallah. A Merchant Ivory movie, directed by James Ivory, is sort of a folklore in India Crossover Cinema.Movie is about a family of English actors – Buckinghams - who stage plays in India. Story showcases an evolving India where a nomadic family tries to accommodate themselves. Story has an pivotal plot of family's daughter falling in love with an Indian, played by Shashi Kapoor, who is in a romantic relationship with a Bollywood actress. Largely autobiographical, film achieves a lot in terms of storytelling and performances. Movie highlights the downfall of theatre culture in India and rise of Bollywood.Shakespeare Wallah will be remembered for many things. Satyajit Ray's music will be one of them. In fact, a large part of the crew was Ray's and that includes a familiar name – Subrata Mitra. Story is brilliantly carved by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Her being close to Kendal and Kapoor added the realism such movies demand. Like typical Ivory movies, movie is subtle statement of filmmaking.

george karpouzas I have watched Merchant-Ivory productions in the cinemas of my native country and was impressed by the fine evocations of the times they presented added obviously by a considerable budget for costumes and technical apparatuses. This situation does not exist in this movie which is poorer but still very fine. The relationship between English and Indians as well the antithesis between the quality theatre and the emerging native movie industry exemplified in the the feud between the English girl and the Indian movie star vying for the heart of the male character was impressive, although being neither English or Indian I could not escape the conclusion that the English were associated with quality theatre while the Indians with popular movies and this equation obviously had a qualitative element in it. The version I saw did not contain subtitles therefore I had some difficulty apprehending the Shakeaspearian performances which are interspersed in the movie. Nevertheless it is a movie I recommend since what I like most was the general impression it conveyed.

Tim O'Grady This early (if not first) Merchant-Ivory collaboration anticipates what the team was later able to do with larger budgets and color cinematography. Set in post-independence India, it tells the story of a small, though thoroughly professional traveling Shakespeare company fallen on hard times. The troop, built on the talents of the three Buckingham family members, including the young and fetching daughter Lizzie, is slowly dissolving in a culture increasingly hostile to their art and readier to worship the queens of the silly Indian pop cinema.The main thread of the plot concerns a rather thin romance between Lizzie and a young Indian playboy quite under the thumb of a local movie vixen named Manula. Meanwhile we are given snippets from various Shakespeare plays: Hamlet, Othello, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra.Fine B&W photography, though much in this film seems dated now.