Release Date – 6th December 2024, Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 30 minutes, Directors – Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane
Out of work due to the COVID lockdown, actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen decide to stage a production of Hamlet in GTA V Online, with an ensemble of other players.
Grand Theft Hamlet tries its best to escape claims that it’s a feature length YouTube video, however more often than not its its dramatic pushes that cause it to fall back into this feeling. As out-of-work actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen encounter the difficulties of trying to put on a production of Hamlet in GTA V Online during the COVID pandemic occasional shots and montages leak in as if reflecting scenes of struggle – player characters walking along the beaches of Los Santos when everything seems to be falling apart around them, having just claimed to their friend that this production is all they’ve got at the moment. The dramatic edges of these moments feel forced due to the clear construction and still having to happen in the game, the tone feeling a bit too serious compared to the amusement of the rest of the surroundings.
The opening text promises us that the world of the game is “a violence and beautiful world where almost anything is possible”. As performances happen on the top of skyscrapers with giant jets hovering above shooting down police helicopters and other players threatening to interrupt and cause an early character death there are certainly laughs to be found. As there are in early player interactions, whether it be the general audition process with people asking if they can play Harry Potter, claims of “I have a face for radio and a voice for mine”, or someone using their nephew’s account for the day. Yes, it’s the kind of humour that you can occasionally find on YouTube, but it’s enough to amuse and help ease you into the film, removing layers of scepticism that there might be; and it manages to successfully work with an audience, disarming themselves and relaxing into things relatively quickly.
For the most part the film isn’t taking itself seriously and recognises that it is a film about people trying to stage a production of Hamlet in GTA V. It takes that idea and has some fun with it, with the aforementioned occasionally more serious moments not quite settling in amongst everything else. For the most part the film wants to have fun and depict the build-up and process of putting together the production, occasionally with the feeling of a highlights reel rather than anything wanting to be more in depth.
By the time we get to the production itself it’s brief and doesn’t entirely hold the attention as much as what has come beforehand, particularly when considering the in-game crashes and chaos that has happened during the build-up rehearsal process. Perhaps it’s simply a case of featuring towards the end of a film that knows that it can only just about stretch to 90 minutes (pretty much hitting that run-time bang on). We see the success and reception towards the production and just wish that more of that could have been felt in the moment, and indeed the documentary as a whole.
Showing that it had become a bigger thing rather than a small, fun idea in game, after discovering an outdoor theatre space in the expansive world, which became bigger and more personal for the central actors, would have perhaps brought another layer to the film giving the final performance in particular more effect. As it is, there’s a good deal of amusement in Grand Theft Hamlet’s thankfully short run-time to keep it going and just about stop it from feeling as if it could entirely be watched on YouTube.
While certain dramatic moments may feel a bit too constructed, and the hit of the final production could be greater, the amusement that Grand Theft Hamlet’s base provides is enough to see it through to the end. Pretty much what you would expect it to be, it manages to work with and relax an audience quickly enough to bring out the laughs.
Just A Little Bit Random 