Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Unfunny

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead
Dir. Jordan Galland
2009
The only zombie to be found in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead is the shambling corpse that was once Ralph Macchio’s career. Now you may think it cruel to mock a man who’s life peaked 25 years ago and has since been auctioned off for vanity projects for Will Smith’s spawn, but watching a slumming former teen start waddle his Kennedy bloated visage through this incoherent, bloodless vampire farce is pretty much indicative of the world of suck we’re about to enter.
Vampires are not zombies. I wish Netflix knew the difference before I bumped this mislabeled shitfest up to the top of my queue on a lark. You owe me 82 excruciating minutes, Netflix!
Sad sack Julian (seriously, can I get a comedy/horror lead who isn’t a total loser?) is an unemployed 20-something theater director living in a back room at his doctor father’s office after breaking up with Anna (Devon Aoki, the model best known as the sword wielding Miho from Sin City).
Anna has moved on to possible mobster/failed business man/Ghost of Jersey Shore Yet to Come Macchio. Julian’s post-Anna life is a string of one night stands and moping with actor sidekick Vince. That all changes when Theo Horatio hires Julian to direct his avant garde production of Hamlet … with vampires. Soon Julian’s cast Vince as the dour Dane, Anna gets drafted as Ophelia and Theo starts eyeballing her pearly white neck.



ZombologyVampirology: The thoroughly incoherent plot revolves around Horatio and Hamlet (yes The Horatio and The Hamlet) who have somehow been transformed into vampires for reasons that involve the Holy Grail. I swear I was paying attention, taking notes even, but I have no idea what this movie is about. Vampire Horatio (who can walk in the sunlight, favors pancake makeup and detests garlic) has apparently spent the last 800 or so years putting on various vampiric productions of Hamlet and lunching on the cast – but the not the director. For some vague reason vampire law prevents him from noshing on the director until after the curtain falls. Unfortunately, that means Julian survives the bulk of the movie.

This movie is so awful it challenges my resolve as the ZomBlog’s self-designated Bad Cop.
Right from the title cards that break up sequences – Job Interview With a Vampire, Breakfast is Tiffany, Grave New World – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern just tries too damn hard and doesn’t deliver on either the gore or the giggles. In fact, this is the literary equivalent of Family Guy: instead of actual jokes, it just keeps tossing out endless cultural allusions and hoping those will distract you from the lack of humor, character or discernible plot. Given that damn near everybody in Hamlet dies in the end, I at least hoped the director would assuage our misery and off the entire cast horrifically, but alas and alack, most of these whiny fuckers survive. The movie never deviates an iota from the romcom template and you know exactly how this piece of shit will end. And vampires be-damned, it’s not bloodily. Imagine Twilight as written by Seth MacFarlane. This sucks 86 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.