Hamlet 2 (2008) Movie Review

I’ll admit, I might have laughed at Hamlet 2 a little more than the average viewer because I have a particular loathing for the Teacher-That-Changed-My-Life classroom drama. Now that I’ve started writing this review I’ve realized that I hate it more than I hate any particular genre because there really isn’t any decent variation to the common them with its inspiration-by-numbers bullshit and Very Important Life Lessons you can see a mile ahead…

You know them because you’ve been forced to watch them in school at one time or another while your teacher grades papers: Dead Poet’s Society (if I got a paper cut every moment there was an obvious cliché, I would have bled to death before minute 25. At least Robert Sean Leonard got to die before this movie ended leaving the rest of us to finish this dreck ), Lean on Me (…while I doze off from tedium), Dangerous Minds (…would stay far, far away from this formula flick as in real life a teacher that looked like Michelle Pfieffer would have had a train run on her before the second bell rang), and most recently, the Oprah Winfrey-produced The Great Debaters (debate and racism!!! Integrate them together and get a…really dull movie. It might have been better if Robert Downey Jr. played Denzel Washington)…

The exception being of course, Mark Harmon in Summer School, because Freddy Shoop is a cinema god

So it gives me perverse pleasure to see this particular genre shot up like a High school cafeteria in the late 90’s… I’ll even admit to liking High School High despite it being really, really bad.

But Hamlet 2 is NOT bad. It’s funny. At times it’s very funny. The last 20 minutes are very very funny. Is it funnier than Tropic Thunder? No, but don’t let that stop you from watching it and after you wasted time and brain cells seeing Death Race, a little mirth couldn’t hurt, could it?

Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) is a really bad actor. He’s quit the game to become a really bad high school drama teacher in Tuscon, Arizona (“Where dreams go to die…”). You know the type: They smell like they’ve just burgled a head shop and use words like ‘transform’ and ‘connection’ in regards to their ‘craft’. Yet you still wonder why they’re teaching high school drama instead of actually being paid to act.

His plays suck, as witnessed by a less than enthusiastic nowhere-near-capacity crowd and an unkind prepubescent drama critic. His alcoholic wife (Catherine Keener) seems to loathe him because he’s shooting blanks and she wants to get pregnant.

But there’s good news: He’s got new students that he can inspire.

Bad News: They’re “ethnics” (the film’s euphemism for Mexican gangbangers) who only took the drama class because they’ve run out of electives.

Even More bad news: The school’s decided to cut drama in order to reduce the budget.

So Dana decides to put on a play that will save the school and after a writing montage (including a shot without pants), he produces the play Hamlet 2, the sequel to the Kenneth Branagh film in which I got to celebrate both my 20th through my 21st birthdays while waiting for it to finish.

Dana’s made some changes to the original text: There’s a time machine, Laertes is bi-curious if not full out flaming, and Jesus Christ is a main character. Along with the usual sex and violence and sex, moderate as it is. And it’s a musical.

The high school’s not so keen on the idea, and so begins the moral and ethical dilemma that is at the crux of Hamlet 2.

Do Dana and the kids get the play off despite its obstacles? Will Dana nail Elisabeth Shue? Who is Elisabeth Shue? Why is David Arquette in this movie? When can I, I mean you, download these songs? For those answers and more, you’re just going to have to watch the movie…

…and be prepared to be inspired

What works About Hamlet 2-

1) By comparison, director Andrew Fleming makes masterpiece compared to his previous movie, which happened to be last summer’s Nancy Drew. I realize it wasn’t all that difficult to do, but it’s a step in the right direction

2) Erin Brockovich…as you’ve never seen her before

3) I’ve never really liked Steve Coogan and usually found him annoying and trying too hard. I was glad that he wasn’t in Tropic Thunder for very long. I think it’s because the first thing I saw him in was that horrible Around the World in 80 Days from ’04…and he’s never lived it down. Except now. Yes, his Dana is pathetic no-talent hack, but it’s a very funny and likeable wannabe and despite yourself and your knowledge that Dana really is untalented, you find yourself rooting for him. Though you wish you didn’t see his balls so much

4) The formula “My Parents Won’t Let Me” scene is nicely turned on its ear

5) An Academy Award Winning Voice-over Guy. It’s better than his work in the putrid Eragon

6) Somebody really hates Tuscon (“No matter what you do or where you go…it’ll be better than Tuscon”)

7) As you watch it, you think to yourself that you’d really like to see the play Hamlet 2 in its entirety

8) David Arquette plays a monosyllabic dim-bulb in this movie, which I guess is not very difficult for him. Less is better when it comes to him

9) Yolanda (Natalie Amenula) can get the shit kicked out of her during the movie and still find time to say pseudo-inspirational maxims…just when the movie really needs it

10) No doubt you’ve probably heard snippets of the Rock Me Sexy Jesus, but you’d be hard pressed NOT to sing along to the ditty Raped in the Face. It’s just so darn catchy…and it also makes you think.

What doesn’t work-

1) As you walk out of the theater, you like the movie, but much of what doesn’t work has to do with opportunities missed, as in they could have gone so much funnier and over the edge, but stopped for whatever reasons

2) Elisabeth Shue’s casting as…Elisabeth Shue as a nurse seems inspired, but the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with her as it gives her nothing funny to either do or say

3) Catherine Keener, one of my favorite actresses, is completely wasted in what had to be a favor to the production team, though her scene in the bar is one of the funniest in the movie

4) Amy Poehler’s Cricket Edelstein (“I have nothing to fear, I’m married to a Jew”) is wicked sharp in her few scenes, but you wish her character was in it for a lot more

As you know, Hamlet’s William Shakespeare died in 2002, but not before writing such timeless plays like Cats, and such classic novels like The Shining and the bestseller The Da Vinci Code. Would he have liked the sequel to one of his most famous plays…had he not been dead?

I think yes, because he hated Dead Poet’s Society too. So if Shakespeare liked Hamlet 2…’Tis Nobler in the mind that you should give it a shot