CineBad!!!

Also known as Amled, Prinsen af Jylland , this Danish gem is an example of what the government of Denmark can do if it has a lot of money on its hands, but not many ideas. This film is a retelling of the Danish saga (“Amled, Prince of Jutland”) from which ole Will Shakespeare himself got the inspiration for Hamlet. See the connection? Amled… Hamlet? I was confused for a little while, because the “Am” in “Amled” rhymes with “Tom.” It took me a while to figure out that they weren’t ordering an omelet.

It is sort of interesting to see the original events of the Hamlet story. We get to see exactly what happened when Amled got shipped off to England. He scored a babe, and got into one of the cheesiest battle scenes I’ve ever seen. This battle scene is for what I shall henceforth remember this movie. I don’t think that words can do this scene justice, but I’ll try to describe it:

Take a piece of cardboard (an empty cereal box will do), and cut it into the vague shape of 3 soldiers standing in a row. Paint them black. Dim the lights. Shine some flashlights through red and yellow plastic wrap onto a wall. Now rock the cardboard solders back and forth in front of the wall while playing a tape of people yelling and banging pieces of metal together. I kid you not!

Aside from fighting, we learn other facts about how our ancient Dane friends lived. Judging from the film, they took a lot of steam baths and then beat themselves with tree branches. Maybe they did do that a lot back then, but do we really have to see it so often? The acting was good- Christian Bale, Helen Mirren and Gabriel Byrne all gave fine performances, as usual. But why were they in this film to begin with? The sets and costumes looked like something out of Monty Python and the dialogue was corny. Why didn’t the government of Denmark put up the cash to do a film in Danish with Danish actors?