Sure, Branagh's Hamlet was a brilliant and accurate adaptation of the play, but it was missing one very important element: The Moviephone guy.
But I get ahead of myself.
In Michael Almereyda's update of this Shakespeare classic, the trials and tribulations of a young prince bent on revenge are transplanted from Denmark of old to modern New York. Our hero Hamlet is portrayed by Ethan Hawke who, thanks to exciting technological advancements, doesn't talk or change facial expressions at any time during the film. Seriously. When we do hear Hamlet's voice it's almost always as an internal monologue dubbed in later. It doesn't really matter, though, because Ethan delivers the Prince's lines so unconvincingly that one wonders if he might have accidentally grabbed the Los Angeles phone book by mistake. The lovely Julia Stiles takes on the role of Ophelia, but with one slight variation: No lines. Yes, Almereyda brilliantly took an already sparse but important character and reduced her to a mute. The poor thing struggles so hard to get her character's motivations out without words, that she ends up looking like a French mime who's trying to tell Hamlet to steal third. And her brother's worse. Liev Schreiber's Laertes is inexplicably the only character in the film with a British accent. Well, not a British accent per se, but that kind of pseudo-Shakespeare-speak adopted by folks who have no earthly idea what they're talking about. This is compounded by his taking even the most light-hearted of his lines and adding a grim intensity previously reserved for Jack Palance's character in `Cops and Robbersons'. Then as a finale, he stares off into space in such a way as to indicate he may be playing an improv game in which he imagines himself to be reading his lines from the side of a distant moving bus. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Liev Schreiber, I just wish he was in the same movie as the rest of the actors. As for everyone else, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do an excellent impression of Bill and Ted, Claudius and Gertrude are weak at best, Horatio is unintelligible, and the Gravedigger and Fortenbras are essentially absent. Last, my personal favorite, Bill Murray as Polonius. I know Polonius is a funny character, but not Bill Murray funny. Murray knows it too, but he can't find his footing, so he hops from ultra nonchalant to so bored out of his skull he's not even listening to himself.
But was it at least adapted well? Nope. Since Hamlet's an amateur filmmaker rather than an amateur playwright in this version, his famous soliloquies are typically presented as gripping scenes of Ethan watching himself on a monitor, completely undercutting the drama. Good idea taping the rehearsals, bad idea putting them in the film. As for the `to be or not to be' speech, Almereyda chops off the stirring opening lines and replaces them with some barely related file footage, then he tacks on the rest of it a few scenes later as Hamlet wanders through a Blockbuster Video. Product placement? Gee, I guess so, because it sure didn't lend itself to the film. Neither did the big, gaudy Pepsi One machine that the Ghost disappears into, or the appallingly gratuitous insertion of the Moviephone guy into the background of another scene. Another obvious botch occurs when Hamlet begins to go crazy despite the fact that his `I'm going to pretend that I'm crazy' speech has been cut. So we see the sequence in which Hamlet calls Polonius a fishmonger, obviously feigning mental instability, yet because the explanation is absent, Ethan Hawke gets lost. So he plays it like he may be just insulting Bill Murray, or is perhaps actually crazy. A few scenes later Polonius drags Helen `Ophelia' Keller to a pool where the King and Queen are lounging so he can give them the scoop on their nut-ball son. Murray's delivery is so uninteresting, however, that Ophelia spaces out and has a surreal foreshadowing daydream about drowning in the pool. So when the time comes, does she drown herself in that very pool? NOPE! That would make sense. Instead she's found face down in a two-foot deep decorative office fountain. How embarrassing that must have been as executives walked by. `Need help?' `No, I'm almost dead, just give me a second.' Of course her lame death enrages Liev who luckily came back from France just in time to look more intensely confused than ever. So he challenges Ethan to a rooftop duel. However, because this is modern fencing, Hamlet and Laertes are decked out in padded outfits preventing either of them from getting hurt! Liev gives a knowing glance to Claudius to confirm that he's picked the sword with the poison on it, yet this NEVER COMES INTO PLAY. No one is even scratched until the film hiccups and Laertes just pulls out a gun and shoots Ethan, managing to off himself in the process. Gertrude who's given no indication she's even still in the movie, drinks the poison wine, and Claudius takes a slug from Hamlet, almost flips off the roof but thinks better of it and just dies. The play winds down and Horatio delivers his most famous words which, unfortunately, no one can understand.
And did I mention that Claudius' super secret plans to kill Hamlet are in the form of an email on Rosencrantz's laptop that has the subject `Plans to Kill Hamlet'? What about the fact that Hamlet wears a goofy snowboarder hat the whole film? Have I told you about Bill Murray turning into a short Mediterranean guy right after dying, or the long introspective shot of the boom mic?
Bottom line, if Shakespeare had written and directed KFC commercials.no that's too harsh, his commercials would have been better than this. It's Branagh all the way, baby. Or if you're pressed for time, Mel Gibson. But please, friends don't let friends watch Hawke.
But I get ahead of myself.
In Michael Almereyda's update of this Shakespeare classic, the trials and tribulations of a young prince bent on revenge are transplanted from Denmark of old to modern New York. Our hero Hamlet is portrayed by Ethan Hawke who, thanks to exciting technological advancements, doesn't talk or change facial expressions at any time during the film. Seriously. When we do hear Hamlet's voice it's almost always as an internal monologue dubbed in later. It doesn't really matter, though, because Ethan delivers the Prince's lines so unconvincingly that one wonders if he might have accidentally grabbed the Los Angeles phone book by mistake. The lovely Julia Stiles takes on the role of Ophelia, but with one slight variation: No lines. Yes, Almereyda brilliantly took an already sparse but important character and reduced her to a mute. The poor thing struggles so hard to get her character's motivations out without words, that she ends up looking like a French mime who's trying to tell Hamlet to steal third. And her brother's worse. Liev Schreiber's Laertes is inexplicably the only character in the film with a British accent. Well, not a British accent per se, but that kind of pseudo-Shakespeare-speak adopted by folks who have no earthly idea what they're talking about. This is compounded by his taking even the most light-hearted of his lines and adding a grim intensity previously reserved for Jack Palance's character in `Cops and Robbersons'. Then as a finale, he stares off into space in such a way as to indicate he may be playing an improv game in which he imagines himself to be reading his lines from the side of a distant moving bus. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Liev Schreiber, I just wish he was in the same movie as the rest of the actors. As for everyone else, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do an excellent impression of Bill and Ted, Claudius and Gertrude are weak at best, Horatio is unintelligible, and the Gravedigger and Fortenbras are essentially absent. Last, my personal favorite, Bill Murray as Polonius. I know Polonius is a funny character, but not Bill Murray funny. Murray knows it too, but he can't find his footing, so he hops from ultra nonchalant to so bored out of his skull he's not even listening to himself.
But was it at least adapted well? Nope. Since Hamlet's an amateur filmmaker rather than an amateur playwright in this version, his famous soliloquies are typically presented as gripping scenes of Ethan watching himself on a monitor, completely undercutting the drama. Good idea taping the rehearsals, bad idea putting them in the film. As for the `to be or not to be' speech, Almereyda chops off the stirring opening lines and replaces them with some barely related file footage, then he tacks on the rest of it a few scenes later as Hamlet wanders through a Blockbuster Video. Product placement? Gee, I guess so, because it sure didn't lend itself to the film. Neither did the big, gaudy Pepsi One machine that the Ghost disappears into, or the appallingly gratuitous insertion of the Moviephone guy into the background of another scene. Another obvious botch occurs when Hamlet begins to go crazy despite the fact that his `I'm going to pretend that I'm crazy' speech has been cut. So we see the sequence in which Hamlet calls Polonius a fishmonger, obviously feigning mental instability, yet because the explanation is absent, Ethan Hawke gets lost. So he plays it like he may be just insulting Bill Murray, or is perhaps actually crazy. A few scenes later Polonius drags Helen `Ophelia' Keller to a pool where the King and Queen are lounging so he can give them the scoop on their nut-ball son. Murray's delivery is so uninteresting, however, that Ophelia spaces out and has a surreal foreshadowing daydream about drowning in the pool. So when the time comes, does she drown herself in that very pool? NOPE! That would make sense. Instead she's found face down in a two-foot deep decorative office fountain. How embarrassing that must have been as executives walked by. `Need help?' `No, I'm almost dead, just give me a second.' Of course her lame death enrages Liev who luckily came back from France just in time to look more intensely confused than ever. So he challenges Ethan to a rooftop duel. However, because this is modern fencing, Hamlet and Laertes are decked out in padded outfits preventing either of them from getting hurt! Liev gives a knowing glance to Claudius to confirm that he's picked the sword with the poison on it, yet this NEVER COMES INTO PLAY. No one is even scratched until the film hiccups and Laertes just pulls out a gun and shoots Ethan, managing to off himself in the process. Gertrude who's given no indication she's even still in the movie, drinks the poison wine, and Claudius takes a slug from Hamlet, almost flips off the roof but thinks better of it and just dies. The play winds down and Horatio delivers his most famous words which, unfortunately, no one can understand.
And did I mention that Claudius' super secret plans to kill Hamlet are in the form of an email on Rosencrantz's laptop that has the subject `Plans to Kill Hamlet'? What about the fact that Hamlet wears a goofy snowboarder hat the whole film? Have I told you about Bill Murray turning into a short Mediterranean guy right after dying, or the long introspective shot of the boom mic?
Bottom line, if Shakespeare had written and directed KFC commercials.no that's too harsh, his commercials would have been better than this. It's Branagh all the way, baby. Or if you're pressed for time, Mel Gibson. But please, friends don't let friends watch Hawke.
