Milk

Australia

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Role Models

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Changeling

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W.

What Just Happened

Happy-Go-Lucky

If you’ve ever longed to see terminally uplifting movies like Dead Poets Society and Stand and Deliver knocked sideways, you might find something to love in Hamlet 2, a sometimes twistedly funny, but more often shrill, comedy. Steve Coogan stars as Dana Marschz, a former actor more famous for doing commercials for Jack LaLanne’s power juicer and herpes medication. Now he teaches theater arts to gang bangers and underachievers at a Tucson, Arizona high school. Dana is a singularly unhinged creation—zipping around town on a bike wearing a caftan, staging two-character stage versions of Erin Brockovich, trying to boost his ego and impress his clueless class of students with tales from his days on the set of Mrs. Doubtfire, and being so oblivious to reality that he doesn’t realize he’s losing his sexy, sardonic wife (Catherine Keener) to their moronic boarder (David Arquette).

When Dana is told that the drama department is about to be shut down, he stages one last blowout: a lavish, musicalized time-travel version of Hamlet, this time with a happy ending, and featuring such characters as Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton and Jesus and such very funny production numbers as “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.” Don’t ask how he scrounges up the money—that’s one of the many gaping holes in the script, by South Park and Team America’s Pam Brady and director Andrew Fleming, one that is as often on point as it is hit and miss. One of the film’s bigger problems is that Fleming doesn’t appear willing or able to reign in the enormously talented Coogan who can be as annoying as an unleashed Mike Myers. The movie isn’t without its quirky charms and pleasures. Keener scores nicely as Coogan’s sarcastic, over-it wife and Elisabeth Shue turns up, playing a version of herself—an actress disaffected with Hollywood—who has found a more personally rewarding career in nursing. Still, if you stumble into Hamlet 2 hoping for another Little Miss Sunshine or Juno, you might find a lot less than you bargained for.

—Stephen Rebello

photo: Cathy Kanavy/Focus Features