I’m told there are a lot of references to Hamlet in the cult classic “Strange Brew”. It’s been awhile since I read it in high school English, and the only references I can pick out are the brewery being named “Elsinore” and the one dinner scene where Pam Elsinore questions “marrying so quickly after the funeral”.
Does anyone here know a lot about Shakespeare and also have seen Strange Brew? Can you point out anything else to me?
If I knew more about Shakespeare I’d be all over this one but alas I was more into beer and less into literature.
DAD, Bob broke your beer…
NO I DIDN’T - Doug broke it!
I’ve heard that as well but I won’t fool anybody-I’ve read one shakespeare play in my life and it was required reading.
The only thing I remember about the explanation was something to do about the one brother killing the other brother and marrying his wife.
Now take off eh!
ok, the references are a bit murky but here goes:
The aforementioned “Elsinore” connection.
The death of the father followed by the marriage of the brother to the widow.
The involvement of the brother in the death of the father.
The ghost of the father communicating with the living in a crytic manner.
One could say that the McKenzie brothers are similar to Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. At least they like a lot of beer and Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are college boys and we all know about college boys.
After that you really need foglights to see connections. I suppose the hockey game the bros use to distract the badguys could relate to the stage play that Hamlet arranged.
Of course there is the one major scene where Hamlet spoke of his thoughts on death and stated “My brother and I always thought it would be heaven to drown in a vat of beer. He’s not here, and I’ve got two soakers. This isn’t Heaven! This sucks!”
But otherwise you have to see the problem of charachters direcly relating to each other in each piece of work.
There is no Ophelia unless that hockey playr was suppoed to be her (being drugged making him have a sort of madness) but he ends up living quite well at the end. William S. would never have been so kind.
The widow Elsignore being kind of oblivious to the whole thing and encouraging her daughter to resign herself to her uncle/stepfather’s assumption of control kind of fits but it also had to be that way to make the movie work at all.
The Elsignore heiress (can’t remember the daughter’s name) isn’t enough of a protagonist to be hamlet and he died wheras she does not.
Also ther is no Polonius that I can think of in the movie and we are talking MAJOR player in Hamlet here.
I think you can find strings of minor similarities in pretty much anything if you look hard enough but that kind of examination, if thorough, is going to show just as many things that prevent things from being similar.
how do you spell -“koo ooh koo koo koo koo koo koooo!”
Next thing you will tell me is that Pink Floyd’s The Wall correspond’s to The Wizard of Oz.
I remember reading a magazine YEARS ago with an interview with the McKenzie Brothers and they spelled it, “Coo roo coo coo coo coo coo coo!”
Does that song have any meaning? Is it a hockey team’s theme or something?
It does if you are on acid. But then Listening to Tom Waits “Franks Wild Years” on acid and watching “Vash The Stampede” anime also seems to make sense. It becomes a Cowboy blues opera.
I’ll have you know that making vague and obscure Hamlet references was the only way I got my girlfriend to watch Strange Brew. I think we picked up about everything listed so far, and she also was trying to make some connection between Horatio and that old brewmaster guy (not Brewmaster Smith, but the friendly guy who was Pam’s friend).
Just to add an obligatory quote here, let me give my favorite non-McKenzie line:
“See, the Colonel’s dead and here we are still enjoying his chicken.”
Great movie! This, along with other classics like Fletch (the first one, not Fletch Lives), Summer School, and One Crazy Summer, are seminal films in the Montfort Brothers Film Festival.
Anyway, back to the brothers McKenzie. The film isn’t based on Hamlet, per se, but just has a few nods to it, all of which have been mentioned above.
I’d love to have some Elsinore Beer. Without the mouse in it, of course.
Take off you hoser.
This is also vaguely similar to Richard III, where the Duke of Clarence is drowned in a butt (vat) of malmsey (wine). There are of course, differences: Richard III conspired to kill his brother, etc, and in the play, Clarence actually utters a line indicating his fear of drowning. (As opposed to desiring it as above)
Interestingly, this same Duke of Clarence was ordered to be executed–by his other brother, Edward IV, and not Richard III–and legend has it that he was allowed to choose the manner of his execution and that he himself opted to be drowned in the butt of malmsey. (THIS parallels the line in the film.)
I haven’t seen Strange Brew, but I wonder if anyone who has seen both that film, and “My Own Private Idaho”, can tell me which film was more influenced by Shakespeare. (Hamlet, in the case of the former, and King Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, in the case of the latter)
“This same Duke of Clarence in actual English history”, is of course what I meant.