Zombie Hamlet

I'm not sure who might actually need the following warning, but here goes: To be clear, this movie has nothing to do with Hamlet. It's not a parody, a reimagining, or a commentary of any sort on the themes, plot, or characters of Shakespeare's play. "Hamlet" in this movie functions only as a placeholder for any highly regarded work of literature. It could just as easily have been King Lear, Moby Dick, or Don Quixote. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the screenwriter had never even read Hamlet.

All that aside, somehow this movie is actually pretty amusing? I never expected to watch more than a few minutes of it, but I was pulled along to the very end. The performances are comical, the opening credits sequence is clever, there are some surprisingly stylish flourishes such as a spot-on homage to the cinematography of Kubrick, and the whole thing is written and edited at such a galloping place that it never overstays its welcome.

Is it a great movie? Of course not. Who was the target audience supposed to be? I have no idea. Does it need to be watched by someone researching film adaptations of Shakespeare? Absolutely not. But did I kinda find myself more engaged by it than I was by Olivier's Best Picture winning "masterpiece"? Well....

With the kind of humor that lets kids under ten feel like they're sticking it to the system by watching this film(?) behind their parents back, this movie puts all of its small budget into cameo appearances of C and D listers while dropping the ball on finding a likable lead to play main protagonist. Fresh off straight to YouTube flop "Ghostfacers", Travis Wester tries again to break out of his typecast mold to no avail. Having aged out of his youthful overtly conservative characters, Travis attempts to lead a movie trying something new; acting like someone else. Low hype and low hanging fruit humor seems to put the nail in the coffin in the careers of many of those involved, a sequel to this movie would definitely be a sign of a oncoming apocalypse.

This movie does start off a bit slow but the last half was hilarious. Even the slow start wasn't that bad. This is by far Shelley Long and John Amos' best work ever. If you can find this, watch it.

I've been thinking about the movie Zombie Hamlet for the last few days since I've seen it, trying to figure out why I liked it as much as I did.

I think there are two general reasons.

1. June Lockhart. No, not her grand-daughter, the June Lockhart. The one from the 60's. She must be 90. I'm old enough to remember her from "Lost In Space" and "Lassie" but she was absolutely wonderful in Zombie Hamlet. To me she stole the show. I also liked John Amos, famous for the movie "The Beastmaster" and as JJ Walker's dad in "Good Times" way back then. Geeze, how old must he be? Anyway, him questioning June Lockhart about her "ample bosom" just made me laugh. It was funny, but also downright sweet.

You'll hear people say that anyone can be an actor, but watching these two in this movie really spoke well for the acting profession. Gotta find out who the director was too. He/she probably deserves credit for creating a situation where these two professionals were able to shine.

2. It was a fun movie for adults that you can take your kids to. I don't remember lots of cursing or potty humor or gross stuff that comes with so many movies today, I guess to cater to teenagers. This really was a movie that I'd take my kids to.

I hope this movie gets a decent release. It's worthy of one because sometimes it's hard for a dad to find a decent movie to take the kids to on a family night that he can stand and the kids still enjoy. You won't have to cringe at the drug references, teen sex innuendos, and bathroom jokes.

I recommend it.

How can you not resist seeing a movie with such a great title as Zombie Hamlet? The movie itself is not as good as the title and is different to what you'd expect the movie to be reading the title. Zombie Hamlet is a lot of fun to watch and has moments of smart direction, it wisely doesn't take itself too seriously and seems to mostly know what it's trying to be and do, mockumentary-style and playing for laughs essentially. There is a very clever main titles sequence, a memorable, haunting if loud music score, and there are some funny dialogue and situations, most effective in its focusing on the bad ideas of going into production. The acting is mostly better than average, June Lockhart stealing the show with a genuine sassiness and sense of comic timing. John Amos is wonderfully deadpan too and Jason Mewes thankfully restrains his foul-mouthed persona and is equally tongue-and-cheek. The exception is Shelley Long, who is too over-the-top even at face value. There is some forced and eye-rolling lines where you are actually wincing rather than laughing-out-loud, and some other situations are incredibly ludicrous in sections where Zombie Hamlet does lose its knowing-what-it's-aiming-at quality. Zombie Hamlet doesn't look great, at times the shaky cam is effective but it is overused and distracting, giving the movie a cheap look. The sets and lighting are okay if rather simplistic, the first fifteen minutes after the main titles is very amateurishly shot that it almost puts you off watching the rest and the ending does suffer from zombie overkill and ridiculousness taken to extremes. All in all, has a lot of flaws but it did have its good moments, so while the personal rating is not very high I can't be too hard on it. Especially as it is miles ahead of a lot of movies taking on similar situations and humour, namely in spoofs and found footage movies. 5/10 Bethany Cox