NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

TheDragonDane This is "Hamlet 2000"..... Yes that's what its called. This is basically a modernization of the classic William Shakespeare play with the same title. Sounds like a.....good....idea? Well though it can definitely get pulled off BUT much like the modern day Romeo and Juliet the dialogue is identical to the play from 400 years ago. So there is old English and it doesn't fit at all with the modern day setting. It's incredibly distracting and unfitting. "Modernizing" all the dialogue not even a little bit just doesn't work and you better don't give me the business as a excuse to keep this movie timeless because it's already 15 years old and incredibly out of date. There are fax machines, VHS tapes, and hilarious early 2000s outfits scattered out throughout the movie, it already doesn't hold up.Unlike the Romeo and Juliet (96) which had a ton of stylized cinematography and pacing Hamlet 2000 is mundane, grey and not fun to look at. The setting is in some generic apartment building witch isn't visually stimulating. Though there is occasional creative shots here and there, they are far and few between. But to be honest Hamlet 2000 was pretty low budget and it shows its measly 2 million dollar budget in the lack of visuals and couldn't get close to the epic scale, beautiful shots, from the Oscar nominated Hamlet 1996Little skill was used in the directing as most scenes were people sitting around barely moving. Acting for the most part is wooden and unconvincing. Half the lines are barely audible and most people speak in mumble. I felt like the actors had no clue what they were saying. I barely knew what they were saying. The casting wasn't that good either, Ethan Hawke as Hamlet; Bill Murray as Polonius? What? That doesn't sound right and they just phoned in every scene. Julia Stiles's character Ofelia has a scene where she screams in fear comes off as unintentionally hilarious because it looked like she didn't care at all. One take seems like most they ever did and it makes the movies genre to be a "Thriller" to be underwhelming.The respect for the source material could be taken as offensive. The famous "To Be or Not To Be" speech is filmed in a blockbuster while Ethan Hawke has the goofiest outfit imaginable. Nice product placement there buddy! Then all of a sudden you see Hamlet 2000 watching the actual Hamlet on TV? Wh-what?! How does that even work? Just imagine if its Back to the Future 2 and in it the main characters are seen watching Back to the Future 1 on television. It shouldn't even be in the same universe. The play Hamlet puts on is changed to a pretentious "The Ring" like VHS tape though I kind of like that scene. Sound mixing is muffled a bit though it could've been the VHS copy I was watching. But there was barely any music in the movie when there was it was incredibly generic. There's a scene that takes place in a party and the characters are still mumbling to each other while blaring music is playing. How do they hear each other? This could be the fault of some mediocre editing which has some flashbacks or visions that don't really add to the film at all.This is one of the shorter Hamlet movies to get released just running less than 2 hours which is definitely useful if you wanted a quick summary of the story. And its not a horrible film its definitely watchable and its pretty innocent experiment. When it was released it was well received surprisingly reaching a 70/100 on Metacritic it hasn't aged well however. Hamlet 2000 is still fun to poke at with a group of people. But still there are tons of other adaptions of Hamlet that should be checked out like the 1948 and 1996 ones. Hamlet 2000 gets a 4/10

eammcl Hawke's Hamlet is suffering from major clinical depression, and the film reflects this, meaning that watching it gives you some symptoms of major clinical depression, such as exhaustion, loss of willpower, and desire to end it all and just go to sleep. While the film was objectively excellent and the tone incredibly well conveyed, I feel it was the wrong tone for a movie this length. It made it difficult to finish, because it was so utterly hopeless and depressing. The adaptation itself was good, however. The overall sense I got was not so much a scenic update (Denmark to New York) as a cultural one. Ethan Hawke's Hamlet is American; were he transposed to modern England he would be different, and different still if he were French (most obviously by a clearly improved sense of fashion--that hat needs to go). One of the reviews on Netflix described the movie's Ophelia as "a brooding adolescent" rather than "the classical indecisive waif". I found this description to apply to the movie as a whole, and not just Ophelia. Ethan Hawke's Hamlet is angsty, and there's no way around it. He's petulant and selfish and the very picture of the modern American adolescent male. He cares only for himself, and is insane in the sense of being so depressed he's lost touch with reality. He spends hours upon hours watching and making bad-quality videos (as a side note, why are movies in movies always so pixelated with ludicrously bad resolution, and why are they always strongly tinted green or blue? Don't any fictional characters have HDTV?). Holed up in his room with his own little mind in place of a world, it's no wonder he goes off the deep end and starts trying to kill people. It was hard to feel any empathy for Hamlet; while he was doubtlessly suffering, he used this as a license to wallow in self-pity. I actually found myself siding with Claudius and his mother. Hamlet and Ophelia's relationship, on the other hand, was very well done. I wish the movie had expanded more on it. Overall, this is a well-done film, but slow and difficult to stick with. As a final note, I felt the R-rating was undeserved; the only justification I could find for it was the relentlessly depressing tone.

sarastro7 There has never yet been a Shakespeare movie that took place in the present day which worked well artistically and aesthetically. In opera, modern productions frequently work well, but it's harder with Shakespeare, because he is so poetic that the surroundings need to reflect it, lest they undermine the poetic integrity. The milieu can't be pedestrian, and the words can't be casually and mumblingly delivered. In Almereyda's Hamlet, everything is pedestrian. There are great actors on hand, but they are never given the opportunity to shine. There is no depth of either intellect or comedy here (as Stanley Wells has remarked, Hamlet is the most comical of all the tragedies), and as others have mentioned it is particularly ironic to cast Bill Murray in the role of the play's comic relief character and then have him be serious throughout. Sigh. There is occasional decent acting from Schreiber, Styles and Venora, but I have nothing good to say about the rest. They can do much better, but the director must have failed to inspire them.The movie is a mess. All right, so it is trying to make some analogous points about a struggling film-maker, but it doesn't work well. To replace the medium of the play with the medium of the film as the thing in which the king's conscience will be caught is not a very interesting point, as plays and movies are so similar anyway.There were a couple of things I liked. I liked having the "To be or not to be" speech in the "Action" aisle of the video store, because that speech really is much more about action than about death. I also liked how Julia Stiles made it very apparent that the cause of Ophelia's madness was her powerful love for him, which he didn't requite. I don't think this is necessarily the best interpretation of what happens, but at least it is a clear one.But a main reason the movie is a mess is that the text is so chopped up. Omissions are inevitable lest the movie runs 4 hours, but it should be done with great care. Using the text selectively, and moving it around, always runs the risk of seriously undermining Shakespeare's points and messages, and one therefore needs a tremendously detailed understanding of the text (and its best interpretations) in order to edit it sensibly. Sadly, Almereyda does not possess such understanding.The movie is not completely awful; it is watchable, but most things about it just aren't very good. The characters often don't speak clearly, which debases (yes, debases!) Shakespeare's language, and the modern surroundings tend to be dull, dull, dull. Of the twelve different Hamlets I have seen on DVD, I'm afraid this one is nothing less than the worst of the lot.4 out of 10.

masonbck its been a while since I've seen a movie that would qualify to be one of the worst that i have i ever seen. that was until i watched this movie in my English class. without having previously read the play i would not have known what was going on. Hamlet speaks his words so quickly and quietly without emotion that someone unfamiliar with the play would have a very difficult time understanding the plot. key scenes are taken out from the play, and the modern setting does not work in many circumstances. sadly, the best actor in the movie that played Laertes, was not in the movie enough to quite save it. this is not the most coherent or descriptive review, but i suppose that sticks with the theme of this movie. simply put, please save your time and do not watch this movie.