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Redundant and unnecessary.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) are two minor characters in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Here they are the main characters. Rosencrantz flips coins which constantly comes up heads and Guildenstern assumes a problem with reality. They come upon a traveling troupe of actors led by (Richard Dreyfuss). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern suddenly find themselves in the castle at Elsinore and they encounter the characters from the Hamlet play.As a comedy, the jokes are wordy and eventually wears thin. There is a fascination with taking the two side characters and watching the play from slightly off center stage. The verbal tennis game is fun at first. One must also be familiar with Hamlet. This is a fascinating concept but it does not really work as a movie.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead blends the laws of nature with the principles of existentialism; Through this 'comedic' duo of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Tom Stoppard gives the audience a clear understanding of the existentialistic lifestyle: no matter what choices they make, they are trapped under the predestined death that awaits them both on the stage and in the film.The similarities between the stage and the cinema can be compared with the similar devices that are used: The camera, much like a stage, is an instrument that is used to see exactly what is placed before it. The objective now becomes not necessarily what to show the audience, but what not to show them. The audience is in full awareness that you have the power to show them anything you want at any given time, and in this case, what not to show them is Hamlet.The film is started with Pink Floyd's soundtrack 'Echos'.And no one showed us to the land And no one knows the where's or why's But something stirs and something tries And starts to climb towards the light -'Echos' by Pink FloydThis musical choice of Stoppard's soundtrack for the film could not be better. 'Echos' begins with faint sounds of radar, which exemplifies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's search for themselves; however, they are yet do discover that through their inevitable fate, their constant search for identities will never matter. The lyrics (although instrumented for the film) furthermore develops Stoppard's relationship to The Theatre of the Absurd of not knowing how, why, or what they were doing there. This instrumental version of the track shows how Stoppard (knowing that the lyrics are absent) still took on the great integrity to the song's meaning. As far as the echoes go in the film (pun intended), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern shout several different words throughout the movie, and in turn, are faintly heard by the other characters. This phenomenon might just be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern near the edge of breaking through the script, but as much as they try, they are unable to: they simply reverberate and fade back into their state of nothingness: they cannot escape. Guildenstern seems to have an interesting approach to this dilemma, saying that simply choosing 'what you want' overrides the agony of this universal determinism. "There's a logic at work–it's all done for you, don't worry. Enjoy it. Relax. To be taken in hand and led, like being a child again" (Pg 40). This philosophy was distinguished by Davd Hume, commonly referred to as Compatibilism. Compatabilism says that if your not 'enjoying' life, then what's the purpose of living? Stoppard seems to take a stab at Hume's philosophy with this play, showing that regardless of their fulfillment or enjoyment. Throughout the plot, their inevitable death's give them misery and anguish to constantly worry about. The Theatre of the Absurd is not just about existential philosophy, it establishes and questions all the different philosophies as well. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead addresses types of comedy like low, high, farce and even the more philosophical Comedy of Ideas. Between scenes of the film, pages are seen flying across screen, both before and after the scene change. These pages are commonly believed to be script pages; however, when taking a closer look, one would notice that the text originates from the Roman Missal, quite contrary to the anti-religious consistency the play develops. Here, Stoppard is adding yet another element to the play's determinism. Now, it becomes not what is controlling their fate, but who. When adding this religious context, the characters may indeed be controlled by God, and in result may be predestined to death by God himself: He leads us where we are destined to belong. Ros and Guil constantly question their existence throughout the time-frame of the play. With the many layers of philosophical inquiries and comedic ideas, one could agree that the final piece to this existential crisis lies in its many layers of reality. When the tragedians perform the play to King Claudius, Stoppard adds yet another level of existence to this play in the film. The first level, being the story of Hamlet, to the second plot of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,then on to the Tragedians performance to Claudius, and the final, being the puppet show inside this performance of the Tragedians. This play-within a play-within a play-within a play-within a play exemplifies the many levels of existence and questions the reality of each: which is the real reality? Stoppard uses this clever approach to existentialism to show the true agony and misery Rosencrantz and Guildenstern face throughout their redundant lives, repeating each time the play commences. Both the film and play portray the existential lifestyle Ros and Guil are destined to face. No matter what they do, what they try, or what they don't do for that matter, all result in the same outcome. Even if they decide to enjoy their multi-layered cheeseburger and sail away on boats, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern truly cannot be free, regardless if they are trapped behind the stage, or'boxed' in the screen. Throughout the story, Stoppard ingeniously brought these characters to life–only to let them discover that they ultimately must die.

It was a brilliant idea: to give two minor characters from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' a life independent of the play, but Tom Stoppard's debut as a film director presents a near-textbook example of how not to adapt a work of theatre for the screen. Whatever virtues the film may have are entirely those of Stoppard's original stage comedy, up to and including the topsy-turvy wordplay, at times reminiscent of the old Abbott and Costello 'who's on first' routine. A passing familiarity with Shakespeare may be required to fully appreciate the joke, but in the end it's a moot point: camera tricks aside, Stoppard does nothing to translate his material to the visual grammar of film, so what might have sounded clever on stage comes across as stilted and pretentious on screen. Worse yet, his Hamlet isn't staged as a play, which seems to defeat the premise, and the film is further crippled by some unfortunate miscasting: Richard Dreyfuss is all wrong for the supposedly ominous Master of Players, and Iain Glen's Prince of Denmark compares unfavorably (believe it or not) to Mel Gibson's recent attempt at the same role.

A genuine must-see, the allegoric film where every joke and every action are so layered, that you can't even grasp it all. The original interpretation of the Shakespeare's Hamlet, told from the POV of two minor heroes who honestly have no idea how they got caught up in all that mess, trapped within the plot of the Author. The idea that "All the world is a stage, and we are all merely actors" is embroidered skillfully into the canvas of the story, entwined with the problems of choice, freedom, free will, justice, loyalty. Moreover the movie managed to avoid the pathos/affectedness so typical for intellectual films that usually turns us off, the story is told with such irony and lightness that it strikes all the right notes, making us happy or sad, sympathetic to the heroes. The brilliant actors' works are just the cherry on top. Too incredible for words.