Average Rating: 6.4/10
Reviews Counted: 33
Fresh: 25 | Rotten: 8
It may lack some of the depth and complexity of the play, but Mel Gibson and Franco Zeffirelli make a surprisingly successful team.
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 2
It may lack some of the depth and complexity of the play, but Mel Gibson and Franco Zeffirelli make a surprisingly successful team.
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Franco Zeffirelli directs his third Shakespeare adaptation (after Romeo and Juliet and Otello) with this film version of the tragedy Hamlet. The titular prince of Denmark (Mel Gibson), returns home to his family's castle of Elsinore after years of attending school in Germany to find out his father has died and his uncle Claudius (Alan Bates) is the new king. To make matters worse, Claudius has married Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude (Glenn Close), whom he has unusually strong feelings for.
Dec 19, 1990 Wide
Feb 24, 2004
Warner Home Video
All Critics (34) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (25) | Rotten (8) | DVD (6)
Performances all fall in a middle range between the competent and the lackluster.
[Mel Gibson] is by far the best part of Mr. Zeffirelli's sometimes slick but always lucid and beautifully cinematic version of the play.
Gibson gives the melancholy Dane an earnest but pedestrian reading.
Top CriticThere's nothing embarrassing about Zeffirelli's brisk new version, nor anything particularly remarkable; it's an entirely credible, middle-of-the-road production.
The style of Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, with Mel Gibson in the title role, is robust and physical and -- don't take this the wrong way -- upbeat.
Reduced to 'Master Pieces Theater,' Shakespeare's text nevertheless gains in force what it loses in integrity.
Alas, poor Mel Gibson! I knew him when he was on top of the world.
Mel Gibson emotes as the doleful Dane.
Offers what amounts to a comic book intro to Shakespeare's classic, retaining few of the play's psychological complexities.
It's a surprisingly successful venture, decked out in Anglo-Saxon styles and with a brooding, robust castle setting which oozes horse muck.
In retrospect, it's a small jump from Shakespeare to God. What if Gibson had been stopped then?
Not only is Mel Gibson much better than you might expect, but Zeffirelli's Hamlet is often entertaining and rarely hard to endure.
Zeffirelli does an excellent job at juggling with updating Hamlet, while staying close to the classic play.
Gibson and his ego fancy himself as an ideal Hamlet, which is tragic to the film in a different sense.
Gibson makes a fine, frenzied Hamlet, but Zeffirelli's direction leaves something to be desired.
Gibson's Hamlet is more than respectable, but Helena Bonham Carter's the best Ophelia I've ever seen.
This is a very faithful, even if exaggerated attempt to recreate a shakespearean play, centuries after the material. After the good, but less faithful DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet, Mel Gibson tries his luck at playing the Prince in "Hamlet." I must say that I am thoroughly impressed with the outcome of this
October 16, 2010Super Reviewer
Hamlet: The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. "Shakespeare's classic tale of vengeance and tragedy."I'm not a huge fan of Shakespeare, when it comes to the movie adaptions or just the original plays, but I can enjoy a well made Shakespeare adaption from time to time. The only two I've
October 7, 2011
Super Reviewer
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