Grand Theft Hamlet: Delights Not Me
Grand Theft Auto V was released nine days after my thirteenth birthday. It was, along with Minecraft, the game of my childhood. I’m well versed in its culture.
That’s why I was excited to watch Grand Theft Hamlet. The concept is great: two actors, out of work due to the pandemic, attempt to stage the first production of Hamlet in the GTA Online.
This is disappointing.
There’s so much unrealised potential here. What should be a hilarious examination of highbrow art clashing with the lowbrow is in reality a mawkish pseudo-documentary that overstays its welcome.
It works best when sticking to that examination. Scenes where the noble attempts to produce one of Shakespeare’s classics rub up against the reality of the lawless, digital world they inhabit are funny. Requesting that the audience not murder each other or the actors will always get a laugh from me.
Unfortunately the filmmakers, Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, feel the need to replicate seemingly real arguments and moments of introspection with the grace of first year drama students.
These painfully inauthentic narrative threads lay bare the facade Grand Theft Hamlet has constructed: it’s not the great innovation it claims to be.
For someone of my age, the format they’ve chosen is old hat. There are countless YouTube videos, set within GTA Online, that execute ideas like this in a much more engaging way. The only real innovation here is securing BFI funding and a MUBI release.
If the filmmakers had done research into Machinima, the genre of turning video games into narratives, they might have attempted something more grandiose. Anyone with even a passing familiarity of GTA could see the untapped potential in certain scenes.
On a technical level it’s unimpressive. Granted, the budget must’ve been minimal but you couldn’t splash out on quality sound equipment for the principal subjects? There are some interesting shots of Los Santos, the game’s fictional LA counterpart but otherwise there’s not much to remark on.
When it comes time to perform the play, we don’t actually get it. Instead it’s a grab bag of scenes that propel us to a weak emotional finale. The closing scene is of the filmmakers receiving an award for their work.
It’s a particularly egregious image to leave the story on. It highlights a self congratulatory, insular theme that runs through Grand Theft Hamlet. How hard the pandemic must’ve been on these middle-class actors, well-off enough to play video games all day, record it and eventually receive plaudits from their industry pals.
If it weren’t for improvised comedic nature of the medium itself this would’ve been a disaster. It’s a weak, artistically uncurious film that doesn’t have the courage to play it straight.
Full of sound and fury, signifying not much. Or whatever King Lear said.
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