After a reign of three brief years, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet is overthrown as the worst Hamlet in screen history. It was no problem to modernize the setting by moving the action to the Hotel Elsinore, New York headquarters of the multinational Denmark Corporation; but we are still stuck, even in the mutilatingly trimmed-down text, with people calling one another "King" and "My lord" and "My liege," and the pouty teenager with the baggy jeans and exposed belly-button is still counselled to get herself to a nunnery, and fencing swords are still the weapons of choice of sporting young men -- at least until the unsatisfied loser pulls out a pistol to gain an edge. The informative ghost has not in the least been deterred by electricity; but in place of a troupe of travelling players, we now get a home-made video spliced together from a stack of Blockbuster rentals; and corporate bigwigs are expected to be embraced, whether or not you are a registered Republican, as the present-day equivalent of royalty. The chief results of the makeover: to diminish the language, to exaggerate the plot contrivances, to accelerate the datedness. The movie earns a laugh every time someone new takes a crack at the iambic pentameter: Ethan Hawke (a picture of wintry gloom in his knit cap with earflaps), Julia Stiles, Kyle MacLachlan, Liev Schreiber, Steve Zahn, Karl Geary, and -- winner of the Golden Metronome for rhythmical rigidity -- Bill Murray. The only major players who escape a laugh are Diane Venora and, a playwright in his own right, Sam Shepard. Directed by Michael Almereyda. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.