REVIEW: Hamlet 2

By Philip Martin (Contact)

Former actor turned drama coach Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan, with long hair) and star student Rand (Skylar Astin) take on a high school production of Marschz’s original musical in Hamlet 2.

LITTLE ROCK — Humiliation is the lot of the would-be professional actor, especially one without immediately discernible talent or inevitable beauty. Most who succeed to the point that they show up in movies and on television have suffered a thousand little rejections and crises of faith - they need the approbation of the audience more than they fear the sting of abasement. Their sufficient egos grow callouses.

Hamlet 2

8.7

Rating: R

Length: 1 hour, 32 minutes

More info on: Hamlet 2

That Steve Coogan’s ego is bulletproof may be the main reason the first two-thirds of the exceedingly odd Hamlet 2 was more fun for the actors to make than it is for us to watch; his portrayal of a failed actor turned failed high school drama teacher is far too cruel to be kind. It hurts because there is a real truth to the outrageous character, a silly and pathetic man named Dana Marschz who rollerblades - clumsily - to his job. He and his wife, Brie (Catherine Keener), financially strapped, have taken in a boarder, the dull Gary (a gymmed-up David Arquette).

Marschz (the unpronounceability of the name is a running joke) has but two willing students, drama queens Rand (Skylar Astin) and Epiphany (Phoebe Strole), and a host of what the teacher and his pets presume to be “gangbangers” forced into the class because more desirable electives have been canceled, a fate that awaits the dramaprogram at the end of the semester.

Driven by desperation, Marschz writes a feel-good musical sequel to Shakespeare’s masterpiece in which Hamlet uses a time machine and New Age solecisms (and the intercession of a rockin’ “sexy” Jesus) in an attempt to save not only the program but to feel better about himself.

It sounds like a mess and it is a mess, but it’s a deliberate mess written by Pam Brady, one of the key writers of South Park, and directed by Andrew Fleming (who I didn’t think had it in him). Itfeels like one of those memoir-essays by David Sedaris where the point is often the protagonist’s painful self-consciousness: Marschz is truly the worst kind of hack, thesort of shallow adept who wonders why everyone has to die at the end. It’s pretty clear he has absolutely no soul.

Yet Hamlet 2 swings around - after 30 minutes I was ready to declare it a disaster, to dismiss it as an arch and over-clever exercise, but in the end the movie is redeemed by a weird integrity. Marschz doesn’t grow, nobody really learns any life lessons, but the production numbers in the play within the movie really sparkle, and there’s some bite in the way the script deflates the uplifting commonplaces of inspirational high school teacher films like Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dead Poets Society and Dangerous Minds (to name three that Marschz overtly cites as inspirations).

Sure, there are a few problems - Keener is underutilized, and Arquette’s Gary seems little more than a casting gimmick. Elisabeth Shue appears as a version of herself - one that’s given up the savage world of acting for nursing - but the joke isn’t as funny as it may sound. And Amy Poehler shows up to deliver a one-note performance as an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.

The movie runs the risk of alienating a lot of moviegoers who simply won’t get - or will get but not care for or about - its theater of mortification shtick. Dana Marschz is like a grown-up version of Napoleon Dynamite, marginally smarter but with the same self-defeating obstinance. And he’s the vessel that’s supposed to transport the audience through this bizarro trip. He looks a little shaky, a little unreliable - you could be forgiven for not wanting to go on this ride that will exhilarate a few and make others a little queasy.

MovieStyle, Pages 39 on 08/22/2008