Most critics find Elsinore deeply moving, and nearly all of the praise lands on Andrew Scott. Review after review singles out his performance as Ian Charleson, the actor preparing to play Hamlet while dying, as the film’s centre: raw, physically vulnerable and layered, particularly in the Hamlet scenes and in the scene where he tells his parents he is gay and ill. The Guardian goes as far as suggesting it may be his most remarkable screen work. Stefan Gregory’s score gets a smaller mention for keeping the film moving.
The reservations are about everything around him. Several reviews call the biopic structure familiar and the direction unsubtle, and say the final act tips into melodrama, with one closing montage named as overblown. The spread is narrow: eleven of twelve reviews are positive. The only real dissent comes from IndieWire, which finds the film conventional and forgettable, with rushed editing and flat storytelling that Scott’s performance cannot rescue.