Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)

ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD  
    D: Tom Stoppard                                     (1990)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss,
    Iain Glen, Joanna Roth, Donald Sumpter,
    Joanna Miles, Ian Richardson, John Burgess
Tom Stoppard's lively adaptation of his own hit play, about two minor characters from "Hamlet" who, by destiny or accident, find themselves center stage. A clever idea, filled with plays on words, plays on the laws of physics, and plays within plays within plays within plays. Roth and Oldman play the two leads as a kind of Elizabethan Laurel and Hardy (or maybe two Laurels), torturing logic relentlessly as they try to figure out why they are where they are, never catching on to the dramatic trap that both determines their existence and dooms them. Dreyfuss hams it up grandly as the leader of the players, while Stoppard stakes a legitimate claim to the most inventive, brain-tickling riff on Shakespeare yet. Why couldn't "Hamlet" be this much fun?