William Shakespeare is loved and reviled by many people in the world today. In Anonymous, director Roland Emmerich sets out to dramatize the theory that Shakespeare's works were not written by him.

While Shakespeare authorship conspiracy theories have existed for decades, Anonymous is the first large-scale motion picture to ask the question "What if?" and provide an interesting answer. The theory of choice for this movie is that Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans), the 17th Earl of Oxford, is the man who penned the famous works of William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall). Helping him along the way is Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto), an aspiring writer who has yet to write anything great.

The movie does not succeed in proving that Shakespeare is the real author of his works. Historical inaccuracies pop up in every scene, making Emmerich's and writer John Orloff's creative liberties very apparent. Taken as a movie alone, that would be OK. But Emmerich intends Anonymous to set the groundwork for a documentary film that can be used in classrooms to encourage students to discuss whether Shakespeare actually wrote his famous works.

Anonymous does not bring anything new to the table and only serves to confuse with erroneous concepts.

As a work of artistic fiction, the movie still fails to meet expectations. The film moves back and forth through time, creating a shaky and uncertain narrative. Unnecessary scenes are added seemingly just to increase the length of the movie. Additionally, many of the actors seem unprepared for roles in major-motion pictures.

Overall, Anonymous fails to paint a picture of an alternate history and only serves to convolute a literary dispute that is already permeated with redundancy and conjecture.

Vaughn Fortier-Shultz is a senior at Santa Fe High School. You can reach him at moosemanxl@gmail.com.