Prospera, the duchess of Milan, is secretly denounced as a sorceress and usurped by her brother Antonio, with aid from Alonso, the King of Naples, and is cast off in a small boat to die with her three-year-old daughter Miranda.

After 12 years, Alonso sails back to his kingdom after the marriage of his daughter to the prince of Tunisia, accompanied by his son Ferdinand, his brother Sebastian and Antonio.

[2] Taymor explained the casting decision, "I didn't really have a male actor that excited me in mind, and yet there had been a couple of phenomenal females – Helen Mirren being one of them – who [made me think]: 'My God, does this play change?

The site's consensus states: "Director Julie Taymor's gender-swapping of roles and some frenzied special effects can't quite disguise an otherwise stagey, uninspired take on Shakespeare's classic.

[7] Entertainment Weekly said the film – "theatrically ambitious, musically busy, and in the end cinematically inert – clearly reflects the authorship of myth-loving director Julie Taymor.

"[9] In a similar vein, Newsweek said "the film's special effects, to a surprising extent, add little to the story", and that "next to the concise power of [Shakespeare's] language, the screen wizardry of even a resourceful director like Taymor seems like rough magic indeed".