Movie & Reviews
Hamlet 2: William Shakespeare may be rolling in his grave.
By Elyse Reel
Sep 3, 2008 - 9:12:10 AM

* out of five

This should be a no-brainer: for an outrageous, raunchy, offensive comedy to succeed, it needs to be one of the three, at the very least.

Apparently, in the writing of Hamlet 2, there were no brains able to comprehend that simple fact. Lazy, toothless, and desperate on all fronts, it goes down as the comedy of the summer that has the biggest potential and the least effort.

British comedian Steve Coogan, with a rather shaky American accent, is failed actor/high school drama teacher Dana Marschz. (The name, the movie reminds us no less than a thousand times, is hilarious because no one can pronounce it properly. Hysterical! Ha! I almost ruptured something not laughing.) A master of awful theatrical productions of hit Hollywood films at his Tucson, Ariz. school, he’s nonetheless shocked when his plays get panned and the school’s drama department, consisting of two goody-two-shoes students and a group of surly ethnic stereotypes, gets shut down. The solution? Write a sequel to “Hamlet” – the original play was “such a downer,” he complains – that includes Jesus using a time machine to bring everyone back from the dead and a song-and-dance number entitled “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.”

I am reasonably sure “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” is supposed to be funny or shocking. I am entirely sure that it fails on both fronts; as well as being a limp attempt at blasphemy, it’s not even a good song. Coming at the end of the movie, as the slam-bang finish, it’s like watching someone light a dud firework. The film trumpets its supposed risk-taking, but never really takes those risks. Heck, in the realm of Offensive Portrayals of Jesus, I’d probably pick the clownish version in Godspell over this mess.

Of course, this isn’t all that surprising, since the rest of the film is also a jumble. There are moments of satire aimed at inspirational teacher movies; but then there are moments that embrace the trope with sincere wholeheartedness. The humor wants to be smart and timely, but then falls back on repeated gags where the roller-skating Dana lands on his rear end. There’s some sort of uncomfortable semi-dramatic subplot about Dana’s failing marriage – played too often for laughs – and an unnecessary and overlong cameo by Elizabeth Shue, which bears no relevance to the story. At any given moment, the film is spiraling in nine different directions, and the focus ends up being far too scattershot for the audience to connect with. It doesn’t know what sort of movie it wants to be, and it’s a challenge to separate the sincere moments from the satirical ones. Of course, not that either the sincere or satirical moments ever work, but it would have been nice to be able to tell them apart.

To be frank, the whole thing is just a misfire of epic proportions. I can’t tell you what the Bard would have dismissed it as – nothing flattering, one imagines – but as a 21st-century viewer, let’s just say that something’s rotten in Tucson.

Hamlet 2 runs 92 minutes and is rated R for language, including sexual references, brief nudity, and some drug content. Viewed at Southpark 16.

ereel@villagepublishing.com | 751-0421

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