MST3K: Hamlet

Much better than Mitchell - and I don't think it was just the movie, I think the commentary was actually funnier. It may be the case that I just like the Mike episodes more than the Joel episodes, which I guess would be a sin in the MST3K fan world, because Joel was the original and true fans always prefer the older to the newer. But I can't help it. Mitchell (and Manos) joked more on certain themes (like how Mitchell was fat), but I think it's more amusing for them to riff on absurd gestures and accidental silliness.

Watching this version of Hamlet (an old German dubbed version) made me wonder: is it ever possible for Hamlet NOT to be boring, or was this a property peculiar to the badness of this version? The MST3K premise invites you to think that it's just this version that's exceptionally bad, but I'm not so sure. Everything in Hamlet deals with the theater of the psychological inner life, which seems intrinsically to be lacking in action and excitment. I think what you're supposed to enjoy is the poetry and complexity, but how easily does that get lost in a performance! Even a good, compresible one (and the German dubbed Hamlet was actually pretty lucid, albeit slow).