Hamlet

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's a strong, intelligent performance [by Gibson], filled with life, and it makes this into a surprisingly robust Hamlet.

TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)

Zeffirelli's production is neither high art nor lowbrow pandering, but something in between.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

This great Elizabethean masterpiece comes alive in a rich cinematic version that proves the past 400 years have done nothing to dim its uncanny power to mirror the human condition. [18 jan 1991]

Washington Post Jeanne Cooper

Thanks to director Franco Zeffirelli and an impressive cast, both the tale and the telling are strikingly fresh.

The New York Times Caryn James

Mel Gibson's Hamlet is strong, intelligent and safely beyond ridicule.... He is by far the best part of Mr. Zeffirelli's sometimes slick but always lucid and beautifully cinematic version of the play.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jay Scott

The cinematic strategies are energetic without being vulgar, the words are plain-spoken, and moony Mel's melancholy is what matinee idols are made of. [18 Jan 1991]

Portland Oregonian Ted Mahar

Zeffirelli's Hamlet is lively, energetic and suspenseful. [18 Jan 1991]

Time Staff (Not Credited)

Franco Zeffirelli's film is plenty pretty. It almost works as a cloak-and-bodkin adventure

Los Angeles Times Michael Wilmington

Most of the rest of this Hamlet effective or lovely as parts of it may be, just keeps sawing at the air in a drafty hall and pouring all its light on Mel Gibson and his angelic stubble. [18 Jan 1991]

Variety Staff (Not Credited)

Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet is bland.

Washington Post Hal Hinson

There's nothing embarrassing about Zeffirelli's brisk new version, nor anything particularly remarkable; it's an entirely credible, middle-of-the-road production.

Baltimore Sun Stephen Hunter

Zeffirelli has managed to make Shakespeare's greatest and most modern play one-dimensional. [13 Jan 1991]

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It's acceptable Shakespeare - no more arbitrary than most stage productions, especially the willfully anachronistic ones, or the ones with political agendas thrust upon them. [18 Jan 1991]

Chicago Tribune Dave Kehr

If Zeffirelli's Hamlet does resemble an actual movie at several points, it's thanks almost entirely to the inventive and atmospheric lighting of veteran cinematographer David Watkin, whose somber, gray-green palette gives the film a dignity and substance it would otherwise lack. [18 Jan 1991]

Chicago Reader Hank Sartin

This Hamlet elevates plot to a height that retains the play's atmosphere but squanders its thematic richness in a welter of "Mommy, how could you?" melodrama.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This big-screen Hamlet, pumped up to operatic scale by overkill director Franco Zeffirelli, exposes Gibson's shortcomings.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The rest of Franco Zeffirelli's latest Shakespearean outing is so eager to be cinematic, with its peripatetic camera and souped-up screenplay, that it forgets to make sense.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, a senselessly adapted, ill-conceived, poorly acted mess of a film that's guaranteed to frustrate anyone who loves the play and to put everybody else to sleep. [18 Jan 1991]