Class, today we begin with a question. Who wrote William Shakespeare's works: William Shakespeare or someone else? And, frankly, what difference does it make? You there, with your hand up at the back of the room – Roland, right? Roland Emmerich?

Fancy that, you've made a movie on this very subject, "Anonymous." You're saying it was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who actually put quill to parchment in producing English literature's most profound and diamantine verse. You're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Will Shakespeare himself was an illiterate, egomaniacal and whoremongering buffoon who couldn't scratch out a single letter, much less "Richard III."

Well, now, Roland, that's an interesting theory. Seems you've been influenced by the Oxfordian school of thought, whose hypothesis centers on Edward's personality and poetic techniques vs. Shakespeare's low-class origins. But that bit about Will crowd-surfing after the premiere of "Hamlet" – that's news to me.

Poetic license, you say? You and your screenwriter, John Orloff, are just playing up the differences between the erudite earl and the annoying little hairball who took credit for his genius? Hmmm. I take it you're also playing up some hypothetical sexy time (the so-called "Prince Tudor theory") between a young, horny Edward and hot-mama Queen Elizabeth I, a torrid affaire de coeur that seems plenty shocking, Roland, given Edward's – Who, me? Spoil it? Never.

But since we're on the subject: Who told Jamie Campbell Bower to play young Edward like a pouty disco muffin? And if you're right, Christopher Marlowe was a way bigger jerk than any of us realized. In real life, wasn't he stabbed following an argument over a bar bill? Class, a show of hands: Who wants to see that in a movie? No one's laughing at you, Roland. Please sit down and stop exploding the desks with CGI.

There's no reason a director best known for bloated, apocalyptic action vehicles shouldn't try his hand at an Elizabethan political thriller, especially one that's equal parts "Amadeus," "Shakespeare in Love" and "Desperate Housewives." The digitally wrought period settings are simply gorgeous, and that's a fine, fine cast you've assembled, particularly Vanessa Redgrave as the not-so-Virgin Queen and Rhys Ifans as the older, broodier, despairingly meticulous Edward; I love how he rubs his ink-stained fingers at the theater.

David Thewlis and Edward Hogg are terrific as a pair of sniveling father-son advisers to the queen – and Derek Jacobi soliloquizes with thundering classical force in a pair of modern-day bookends. Yeah, I know: he's an Oxfordian, too. And you're the guy who made "10,000 B.C.," the movie that put ziggurats in the Pleistocene. So if you don't mind, Roland, I'll just go back to believing that someone named Shakespeare (whoever he was) wrote Shakespeare's works. Class dismissed.

ANONYMOUS

2 stars

CAST: Rhys Ifans, Rafe Spall, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson

DIRECTOR: Roland Emmerich

130 minutes

Rated PG-13 (violence and sexual content)

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