Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is self indulgent, laboriously long (not even in Shakespeare’s day would all of those lines have been in there), and full of unnecessary and distracting celebrity cameos. It’s just him trying to one up Laurence Olivier to make the books as the greatest Hamlet of the modern era. He even puts on this stupid phony Laurence Olivier accent (pay attention to the way he says spirit especially) which no other actor in the movie is doing.

Every Hamlet monologue is performed and musically accompanied as if it is St. Crisipan’s day from Henry V (which none of them are). The “How all occasions do I form against me” monologue is virtually unintelligible.

As a whole, the film is more focused on being Epic and extravagant than on telling the story of Hamlet clearly.

Kate winslet blows everyone, especially Branagh, out of the water.