Playwright (and here writer-director) Tom Stoppard has taken two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and given them a story of their own. However, the results, on screen at least, are such that we venture to suggest a run round the block would be more entertaining. Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, exchanging dialogue like a medieval Abbott and Costello, are the hapless pair recalled to Denmark where they become involved in a plot as potty as it's soporific, in which a group of strolling minstrels (led by Richard Dreyfuss, in the role illness prevented Sean Connery playing) depict the events in Hamlet before they happen. Photographed in atrocious colour, this is about as much fun as it sounds (although it worked much better on stage), the proceedings dragging on for what seems like hours. 'I've had enough' says Oldman (who gives the film's only watchable performance) at one stage, and he's right. Connery was lucky.


©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes