The Reelist: 'To Be' or B Movie?

In my previous life as a high school English teacher, I taught “Hamlet.” A lot. And I did a pretty good job of it, in that no kids suffered head injuries from passing out due to boredom.

But when I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s latest film version, starring David Tennant, I felt like I needed to call up each and every student and apologize for getting it wrong. Tennant’s performance turned everything I thought I knew about Hamlet inside out and upside down. I had long been a Tennant fan, but this turned my “Doctor Who” fangirl crush into real respect for him as an actor. And now … he’s in “Fright Night,” which opens Friday.

I haven’t seen it and probably won’t. (I don’t really do scary movies, as I have a ridiculous tendency to believe them.) “Fright Night” might be good, and I get very excited when I see the trailer in which Tennant has a line. But part of me wonders why someone with such talent (and probably enough money to at least roll around on a bed of twenties, if not hundreds) would do what looks like a campy horror film.

That’s not to say popular roles are a step down any more than doing television after establishing a film career is. But I have to wonder whether the man who redefined Hamlet for me found the same challenge playing a vampire hunter.