Hamlet 2

This movie starts off with an invisible voice talking about how to be an actor, you have to live in a dream. But dreams die, and the question posed here is where dreams go when they die. If you are Dana Marschz, then you go to Tuscon, Arizona to spend what is rest of your life teaching drama at a high school. Being an actor myself, there is something quite scary about the fate of this particular actor, who is best known for his herpes medication commercials. Here in Arizona, he hopes to pass on his love of drama and acting to high school students, and that is the thrust of the action in one of the most unlikely sequels in history, "Hamlet 2." It stars Steve Coogan, who we just saw in "Tropic Thunder," as Dana Marschz who ends up writing the sequel in order to save the drama program at the high school where he teaches.

This movie was a big hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and while the movie didn't quite live up to the hype in my eyes, it was still a very clever movie that kept me entertained from beginning to end. It is a great look at how art can never truly be suppressed, even if it is not very good to say the least.

We meet up with Dana Marschz as he has already been teaching at the local high school, and he only has two students (Skylar Astin & Phoebe Strole) who really seem to care about drama and acting. When he comes into his new class for the year, he discovers that is largely populated by Latino students who are in the class because their other electives have been cut, and Drama is the only one left. It reminds me of all those kids I went to high school with who were in the drama class because was the only class they could hope to get an easy A in (other than PE). Dana is convinced that this has been presented to him as a challenge that he must face with no fear.

Dana's existence is a pathetic one, as he is a recovering alcoholic with a wife (played by the great Catherine Keener) who drinks a margarita from a gigantic martini glass. They also have a boarder (David Arquette) who is sleeping with his wife while Dana rollerblades to school (Dana can't afford a car). His gift to the high school are plays he wrote that are direct adaptations of movies like "Erin Brockovitch" and "Dead Poets Society," and they get ripped to pieces by a young critic who shows no mercy for Dana's passion. Dana's basic cry for all the negative criticism is:

"He fisted us!"

Dana ends up coming to this unsympathetic teenage critic to seek inspiration, and this kid suggests that he write something original and put everything into it. Thus, he comes up with what in many ways is a completely unnecessary sequel to one of Shakespeare's most famous plays. The fact that everyone dies at the end of "Hamlet" does not deter Dana, and he comes up with a device to solve that problem in the form of a time machine. What goes on in the play ends up pissing off the typically conservative suburban high school which works to stop the play from being performed. But Dana ends up proving himself right in that you cannot stop art.

It's at times hard for me to critique "Hamlet 2" objectively because the fate of Dana Marschz is the one I hope to avoid in my own life. It is made clear from the outset that this guy not particularly talented to say the least. The movie starts off with a montage of scenes that the main character has appeared in as an actor. They are bit parts that at best probably landed him an agent like that scene he had in "Xena: Princess Warrior." The funniest of these commercials is the one he does for medication for Herpes. Do you want anyone in real life telling you this?

"Right now, I am having a herpes outbreak. But you wouldn't know it!"

Please God, tell me that I won't end up like Dana! However, is it all that bad being him? Not necessarily. In the process of his writing and directing "Hamlet 2," his play gets banned from being performed at the high school, he ends up inspiring the Latino kids to put on his show at a location outside of the school, and he gets help from the ACLU to keep his play from being censored. Talk about free publicity!

The movie itself is a great star vehicle for Steve Coogan who is never afraid to make himself look completely silly. He has done a lot of hilarious work in movies like "Hot Fuzz" among others, and you will not be able to think of anybody else in this role. Steve shows no fear in playing this character as he makes a total idiot out of himself. This guy is a complete failure as both an actor and as a drama teacher. The fact that he somehow inspires these kids who have grown up in a different environment than any he has been is pretty amazing. In the end, it doesn't matter if he is really bad or good (that's the ACLU's take on it anyway). Dana gets the play up to the excitement and the infuriation of the people of Tuscon, Arizona, where dreams supposedly come to die. Steve proves to be a brilliant comic actor in case we never bothered to notice that fact before.

The director and co-writer of the movie is Andrew Flemming, and he does a good job of not taking many things very seriously here. Andrew started off his career as the writer and director of "A Nightmare On Elm Street" wannabe, "Bad Dreams" (the title says it right there). He went on to direct "Threesome," "The Craft," "Dick," and last year's "Nancy Drew." Suffice to say, Andrew has been around for awhile, but I'm not sure if people are aware of that or not. This movie will probably make people more aware of who he is and what he has directed. The movie was also co-written by Pam Brady who is also one of the writers from "South Park." I imagine most of the skewering of religion in the movie comes from here. She probably looks forward to pissing off people like that Westboro church group that picketed Heath Ledger's funeral because he played a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain." Hell, I hope they get really pissed off at this movie. That would make my day!

The movie also features a terrific performance by Elisabeth Shue playing herself. Elisabeth has given up on acting, and she appears to be a lot happier working as a nurse in a sperm bank. Dana goes gaga over her and invites her to speak with his class, but they have no idea who she is. I always found it tragic that Elisabeth never got the same caliber of roles that she should have gotten after her phenomenal performance in "Leaving Las Vegas." A lot of the movies she did afterwards like "Hollow Man" almost made you forget how great she could be. I don't know if "Hamlet 2" will give her career the boost it deserves, but it is great to see her enjoying herself here.

Anybody who has ever been involved with community theater or in high school plays will get a kick out of this flick. In a sense, the students are the ones who manage to get the show up and running, and that was always the case when I was in shows during high school. The fact that Dana manages to inspire these kids through his embarrassing ways is astonishing. When you are already deep into the production of a show, and your director flakes out or becomes useless, you can't just give up. As Dana's personal life hits rock bottom, it's those kids who pull him together.

I also like how the movie got into the conflicts that Dana has with the school and the parents because everyone in these situations always acts in an overly conservative way. As time goes on, I get more interested in what DOESN'T offend people because it seems like we are always looking to get mad about something. Granted, you can see why people might object to Jesus Christ French kissing Satan or with a song entitled "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" (a worthy contender for Best Original Song at next year's Oscars). But everyone is saved in the end due to the protected freedom of the 1^st amendment of the Constitution. That pisses a lot of people off, but that's their problem.

The ACLU eventually gets involved when the show is threatened to be shut down, and a lawyer comes to visit Mr. Marschz to lend her help. She is played in a kick ass scene stealing performance by "Saturday Night Live's" Amy Poehler. Amy's character of Cricket Feldstein is a ball buster about protecting the production and in making sure that everyone involved gets to put it up. Her disinterest in whether or not the play is any good ("It's irrelevant" she says) is hilarious, and Amy continues to show why she is one of the funniest actresses working today. She is a real kick to watch here!

"Hamlet 2" is a lot of fun to watch, and the show that comes out of it is a hoot as it is a quasi-musical in which Hamlet and Jesus team up to change the past with the help of a time machine. Granted, they take all the drama and tragedy out of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," but it is a little hard at times to argue with Dana who calls that play "a real downer." In addition to "Rock Me Sexy Jesus," there is another song called "Raped In The Face" which is Dana's stab at the critics who keep taking apart his plays based on movies. Somehow, I don't think we will be seeing the latter song getting nominated at the Academy Awards.

All the same, "Hamlet 2" is not quite a great movie. It has a lot of great things about it, but I wish they had pushed the envelope a bit more with this one. You have to expect that when one of the writers is from "South Park." I'm not saying that the movie has to be insidiously evil, I just wished that the satire in parts was a little sharper. Or maybe I got just a little too depressed with Dana's station in life because it is one that I hope to avoid myself, and that made it a little hard for me to be more objective about what I saw. Still, in terms of the comedies that have come out so far this year, "Tropic Thunder" is still the funniest, but "Hamlet 2" is every bit as memorable in its own way.

The month of August is typically filled with crap movies that studios couldn't open in January because there is too much testosterone in them. It is a great to save money on the movies because there is not a lot worth seeing. But "Hamlet 2" is one of the few really good movies you can hope to see before the summer fades away into the beginning of the school year.

Just remember, all the world is a stage!

*** out of ****