Hamlet 2

Steve Coogan stars as Dana Marschz – an actor with a few commercials and bit parts on his resume, who has given up the dream and become a drama teacher in Tucson. He’s not a great teacher (maybe even a horrible teacher), and the drama program has become infamous for his annual stage productions based on famous movies (proving he is a worse writer than actor).

Unfortunately, the drama program is about to be put out of its misery due to budget cuts, just as Dana is trying to reach out to a whole new group of students. Since this will be his last chance to wow the faculty, parents and community, Dana is inspired to write a musical that no one will ever forget, mostly because it could be one of the most offensive and horrifyingly bad stories you could ever imagine.

Will Hamlet 2 make it to the stage in defiance of the protests?

Will it save the drama program?

Hamlet 2 is a funny movie, but not the second coming of Little Miss Sunshine or Sideways. While it wants to ride the wave from Sundance Film Festival favorite to box office gold like those two indie hits did, Hamlet 2 will just go down as a quirky film released at a time when bigger movies were starting to wind down and this was worth taking a chance on.

Coogan gives it everything he can, and creates a character who has the right parts creepy, weird and earnest, but the material isn’t as consistent as his performance. Writer Pam Brady and writer/director Andrew Fleming hit some very high notes with the outrageous musical we keep hearing about, but they also suffer from the anticipation. Maybe this is the point and why it is supposed to be ironic, but Hamlet 2, as staged in the movie, can’t live up to the wildness we imagine in our heads as little hints and plotlines are slipped into the movie.

Some of the subplots seem meaningless, especially the adversarial relationship between Dana’s wife (Catherine Keener) and their border (David Arquette), but so much of Hamlet 2 is focused on the staging of the play that this story, as well as one about Dana’s marriage, gets lost and underdeveloped. However, Elisabeth Shue shows up in the movie to provide some of the best self-effacing scenes any actor has been called upon to perform. Her appearance alone might be worth the price of a ticket.

Hamlet 2 rated R for language including sexual references, brief nudity and some drug content violence and language.