Preview: Anonymous

PG-13 for Shakespearean conflict, dramatic puns, play-within-a-play-within-a-Roland-Emmerich-film

Release Date: October 28, 2011

Looking past the reality-bending fact that the director of Independence Day and 2012 has decided to make a movie about the Shakespeare authorship debate, let’s talk about the true issue here: the tagline “We’ve All Been Played.”

Really? That’s it? I know I harped on taglines on Monday, but in a film about the greatest punner of all time, the Will Shortz of his age, the coiner of words and phrases from “fashionable” to “full circle” to “a sorry sight,” the best you can do is “We’ve All Been Played”?

I recruited good friend and noted punner Ben Miller to one-up the Anonymous guys, and it took him about 90 seconds to come up with “What’s In a Name?”, which I think we can all agree is way cooler and more literary. ~Ben Orlin