It’s all there in the title. Grand Theft Hamlet is a movie about two actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, who come up with the dumb and possibly brilliant idea to stage a production of Hamlet entirely within Grand Theft Auto Online. Mashing up iambic pentameter and silly lowball entertainment, doing something ambitious and artistically meaningful while also taking the piss – that’s essentially the 91-minute punchline of the movie. But the punchline is funny enough and each variation of setup and payoff is clever enough that it never gets old.
Grand Theft Hamlet is more about the process of crafting and staging the play than showcasing the performance of the play itself. It begins with Sam and Mark playing Grand Theft Auto Online during COVID lockdowns and stumbling upon a massive outdoor arena, which sparks the idea for putting on a play within the game.
They recruit Pinny Grylls, Sam’s partner, to direct the production, and begin holding auditions. The group of actors they recruit and the genuine connections they make along the way are some of the delights of the movie. The film is also entirely shot entirely within the game using screen capture, with voice chat being our only connection to the real humans behind the production.
Though the medium inherently limits what they can do, the film really does attempt to connect us to its leads. We get glimpses into strained relationships, actors backing out, and more. This drama is contrived by nature of taking place entirely within the game, but it is contrived in a very winsome way. They feel like conversations that probably took place first in the real world and then were recreated in the game for the sake of the film, so though they certainly feel staged, they still feel based in truth.
Make no mistake – this is first and foremost a comedy. The laugh lines hit hard, but they aren’t so much immaculately crafted bits; the experience is more like actually playing Grand Theft Auto with your friends and laughing at all the crazy stuff that happens. The unpredictability of trying to control an uncontrollable environment – where strangers face no consequences for disruption and NPC police are constantly on your tail – gets some big laughs too.
There’s an inherent goofiness to the in-game world. Slapstick violence is a button press away at every moment. Every character is costumed in the most ridiculous thing they can find. A particularly funny in-game branding touts “impotent rage”, which becomes a bit of a calling card for the film. And while you’re laughing the themes and emotional resonance sneak up on you.
What becomes clear as the movie progresses, for those who weren’t already in the know, is that high art and low art are meaningless distinctions. Shakespeare is not as stuffy and pretentious as people think, and Grand Theft Auto is not as crass and surface-level as people think either. Shakespeare’s comedic lines really pop when accompanied by silly Grand Theft Auto gestures – I believe the bard would be proud. And the connections made in Grand Theft Auto Online are no less real and meaningful than connections made elsewhere.
