To be succinct, Casanova is a bit like Shakespeare in Love without the charm and with far less wit. Occasionally funny, never smart, hardly likable, and not much to look at, it would be hard to recommend this to anyone with even a tiny bit of taste. Heath Ledger is serviceable as the famed lover and Oliver Platt almost manages to make it worth the ride, but there just isn’t enough meat to make this a full meal.

The worst part is that drawn out ending saps what little energy the movie had gathered. It’s a frenetic, ridiculous (not in a zany, funny way; in an irritating, eye-rolling way) end to a mediocre movie.