Is Hamnet worth watching? Time Out's advice was to forget tissues and bring towels
Chloé Zhao's Shakespeare drama arrived with a five-star Time Out review that spent its energy warning readers about the last half hour rather than praising the first two. Here's what's actually in it, and who it's for.
Most reviews tell you whether a film works. A small number tell you what to bring. Time Out went with the second option, and it turned out to be the more useful warning.
Phil de Semlyen gave Hamnet five stars, and the line that travelled was short.
"Tissues won't do. You'll need towels."
Chloé Zhao directs, adapting Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel. Jessie Buckley plays Agnes — the film uses O'Farrell's name for the woman history calls Anne Hathaway — and Paul Mescal plays her husband, who is never once called Shakespeare on screen. Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn and Noah Jupe fill out the household. Lukasz Zal shot it, Max Richter scored it and Fiona Crombie designed it.
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What it's actually about
Hamnet Shakespeare died in 1596, aged 11. Hamlet was on a London stage within about four years. The film is built in the gap between those two facts, and it spends most of its running time in Stratford rather than the theatre: a marriage, a household, a herbalist mother, a child who gets ill.
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Zhao strips out a good deal of the novel's structural cleverness, which de Semlyen argued is where the film finds its force. Period detail is kept deliberately plain. There's no attempt to make Mescal's character an author in the biopic sense.
The last act is the reason for the towels
Everything the film has been withholding gets spent in one sequence, when the play reaches the stage and Agnes is in the audience. The Guardian's reviewer, calling the film stately in the run-up, described the finale as overwhelming. It's the stretch that turned a well-reviewed literary adaptation into an awards juggernaut, and it's also the stretch that will decide whether you think the preceding hour and a half earned it.
If a slow, quiet marriage drama sounds like homework, be aware that the film knows exactly what it's doing with your patience and cashes it in all at once.
The awards record, since it's relevant
- Toronto — won the People's Choice Award, historically the most reliable Oscar bellwether going.
- Golden Globes — Best Motion Picture (Drama) and Best Actress for Buckley.
- BAFTAs — Outstanding British Film and Best Actress in a Leading Role.
- Academy Awards — eight nominations, with Buckley taking Best Actress; Variety noted her as the first Irish winner of that category. Best Picture went to One Battle After Another.
- Totals — 56 wins and 196 nominations across the season.
So, worth it?
If you'll sit still for a domestic drama that takes its time, yes, and the consensus is close to unanimous on that. If you want Shakespeare's life explained, or a film about writing, this is the wrong one — the play itself is treated as an event that happens to a grieving woman rather than an achievement belonging to a man.
It opened in US cinemas on 26 November 2025 before going wide on 5 December, and reached the UK and Ireland on 9 January 2026. Watch it at home if the towels business puts you off doing it in public.
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