- RELEASED: 1996
- RUNTIME: 242 mins
- WRITTEN BY: William Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh
- DIRECTED BY: Kenneth Branagh
- STARRING: Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, Richard Briers, Kate Winslet, Nicholas Farrell, Michael Maloney, Rufus Sewell
We watched this in school and it’s absolutely terrible. I love Kenneth Branagh as an actor and even sometimes a director but I just don’t think Shakespeare works on screen. It’s way too over the top and wacky and it feels emotionally hollow. You can’t attach yourself to any of the characters and most of all it just feels disingenuous. None of it feels real and the end sequence where Hamlet kills Claudius is just ridiculous and laughable. My whole class was cracking up.