Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead

D- Horror comedy

Note: I wrote this review in the spring of 2010, and planned to post it just before a then-planned Bay Area theatrical release. The release never happened, and the review was left unpublished. Since the movie is available on Netflix, I’ve decided to post the review now, in hopes that I will spare some of my readers the experience of watching this movie.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead is a one-joke comedy. Worse, the joke is in the very clever title. The fun is pretty much over once you’ve laughed at that. Few things are more painful to watch than failed wit.

The story concerns a vampire production of Hamlet being staged in modern-day New York. The play has been rewritten to be about vampires, and everyone in the cast is  either a vampire or an intended victim who will soon become one. Jake Hoffman plays the hapless hero, a stage director and all-around loser who still manages to get a different gorgeous girl in bed every night despite the fact that he’s living with his father, treats women badly, and has no redeeming qualities.

Despite the title and the concept, there’s very little Shakespeare here. What we see of the play being staged makes it out as an original work, with no relationship to Hamlet except the character names and Elizabethan costumes. Unlike Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which this film refers to in its title) or even A Night In Elsinore, there’s no real love of Shakespeare on display here.

Writer/Director Jordan Galland must have known he had a good thing going with the name—if with nothing else. He divided the movie into chapters with similar punny titles like “Job Interview with a Vampire” and “Death of a Pale Man.” But they, too, get tiring.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead tries to be funny, tries to be scary, and tries to be sexy. It fails on all three counts. It’s not so much undead as unfunny.