A let's-put-on-a-show comedy of broad winks at the audience and pistonlike elbows in the ribs -- written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, though acted, with the sole exception of Joan Collins as a talent agent, by a cast of no-names. The show in this case is Hamlet, misguidedly scheduled for a Christmas Eve opening in a gloomy Gothic cathedral in a provincial village called Hope (opportunity for much punning), and financed out of pocket by a desperate thespian who feels he lags behind the career timetable set in Olivier's autobiography; there's a sprinkling of Noel Coward's patter-songs throughout the soundtrack; and the photography is in fairly dingy black-and-white. These ostensible touches of class somehow never seem to make contact with the hams on screen. Certainly they never restrain them. Michael Maloney, Julia Sawalha, Celia Imrie, Mark Hadfield. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.