baronvonsteve

Imagine the retelling Hamlet in a Norse setting with incredible scenery. Then imagine all the beautiful literature and oration of Shakespeare cut out and substituted with a thin plot and weak dialog woven together with disjointed Viking mysticism. Imagine a strong cast and capable director plodding along through a tedious story with minimal character development and few supporting extras giving the feel of a high budget community theater production. Now that you have imagined such a film keep imagining because the real film is much worse than that. It's watchable but nothing special. That's unfortunate. So much wasted potential.

I'm not a big fan of Will Farrell movies generally (I did enjoy Elf). They seem to have weak writing that starts with a great idea but then misses the mark and relys on degenerate humor to carry things through. This film is no exception. I was hoping that Mark Wahlberg would help but there's only so much that one can do with a weak script. I'm sure that the outline for the film is hilarious on paper. The potential for a great tight comedy with epic running jokes and sketches is there but the writers took a great idea with lots of potential and Farrellized it. Instead of being wry and clever they went for cheap, tawdry, and crude. I'm sure my opinion differs greatly from those who like Will Ferrell's fare. I wanted to like this one but now I just want 107 minutes of my life back.