I disagree.
Hamlet 2 falls short of any kind of comic masterpiece, to be sure, but it's still quite funny and worth seeing. At least on DVD, anyway. I have to say I laughed more than
Tropic Thunder and was less disappointed.
In our present entertainment landscape where claptrap like
"High School Musical" is so successful that it has spawned an industry unto itself, the time was right for somebody to come and rip the modern "let's put on a show" formula to shreds. Director Andrew Fleming (
Dick, The In-Laws re-make) and writer Pam Brady (
Team America: World Police) seemed like a good pair for the assignment. Add the brilliant Steve Coogan to headline the cast, and there was potential for some dark, twisted comic magic. I call Coogan brilliant, but if American audiences only know him from
Around the World in 80 Days with Jackie Chan or as the diminutive Octavius from
Night at the Museum you might wonder what I'm talking about. Anybody who has seen him in all his glory in his UK series
"I'm Alan Partridge", his work with director Michael Winterbottom in
24 Hour Party People and
Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story or his hilarious segment with Alfred Molina in Jarmusch's
Coffee & Cigarettes know the man is truly funny.
Unfortunately
Hamlet 2 is less than the sum of its parts and it never reaches its full potential. That having been said, it's still pretty damn funny. Coogan plays Dana Marschz, a failed actor turned High School drama teacher in Tuscon. His small productions are terrible "adaptations" of movies, such as Erin Brockovich. But after the funding for the drama program is cut, this loser decides to go out with one big bang, pouring all of his extremely limited creativity and dreams into one original production:
Hamlet 2. This also coincides with a large group of Latino kids forced into his program, and through the kind of tough love he learned directly from movies such as
Dangerous Minds, he tries to reach them and meld them to his theatrical vision.
The play itself, when we finally get to see it at the end of the movie, is fantastic. Given that Pam Brady was partly responsible for the great Musical numbers in
Team America and
"South Park", that should be no surprise. Coogan has some great moments throughout with his deadpan style, even with the more outrageous turns the script forces on him. And the happiest surprise for me was Elisabeth Shue, who plays a version of "herself" and has some of the very best moments and lines in the entire movie. Where the script could have used another draft or three is the supporting cast of the kids. Unlike say Christopher Guest's
Waiting for Guffman where each character has time to be explored and developed, the castmembers of the play other than Coogan never get to be more than types. There are still some decent moments sprinkled here and there, but they never become terribly interesting or compelling. The obvious subplot with Coogan's wife (Catherine Keener) isn't much either and mostly just pushes the main story where it needs to go. Amy Poehler, who shows up in the final third of the flick as an ACLU pitbull, has the kind of Amy Poehler moments you'd expect but is nothing spectacular.
So lots of flaws, as you can see, but despite all of them, with that funny premise, Coogan, Shue and the great pay-off and the sheer audacity of the stage production kept me laughing...enough to recommend it. I would have loved to see what Christopher Guest's troop might have done with the idea, to flesh it out more consistently and completely, but as is I'll definitely be buying the DVD months from now and enjoying it multiple times.
GRADE: B-
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