Similarly, Hoffman's rendition of the fairy realm negates its mirth and good humor. Rather than the free-spirited lovers of life presented in the text, the fairies in the film are sniveling, petty, irritable party animals. This is especially true of Puck who has been transformed from a boyish charmer into a crass, middle-aged lounge lizard who revels in peeing in the woods after drinking too much wine. Similarly, Titania loses much of her psychological complexity in the film. The text emphasizes that the strong bonds of an ancient female friendship keep Titania from relinquishing the Indian boy — she wants to care for a dead friend's son — providing a link with the other female characters in the play, whose lives are also marked by strong friendships: Hermia and Helena are like "double cherries" on a single stem; and Hippolyta was once the leader of the Amazons, an all-female society. Hoffman eradicates this emphasis on female friendship, presenting Titania as a selfish and shrewish wife, bent on keeping the Indian boy mainly to spite Oberon.
The effect of Hoffman's changes is that the drama has lost the magic, the mystery, the mayhem of Shakespeare's original conception. Why? Movie critics agree that Hoffman missed the boat in one essential way: He didn't trust Shakespeare. Rather than allowing the language and story of the play to shine, he instead cluttered the performance with gimmicks and gadgets. Rather than letting Shakespeare's original tale tell itself, Hoffman adds scenes that add little to the play's exuberance. A key example is the mud-wrestling bout between Hermia and Helena; one trenchant critic wonders where Jerry Springer is with his whistle at this low point in the performance.
