dangerousdesyres
Get rid of any preconceived ideas about what a movie is supposed to be and enjoy the ride! Bright, innovative, irreverent, and totally unexpected, I thoroughly enjoyed the silliness, slapstick, and satire on various groups of society and the success of the emotionally almost broken. Fantastic premise and great cast, too.
dunmore_ego
"Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go." --Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I.It's blasphemous and filthy and irreverent. And hilarious.HAMLET 2 is GREASE slipping on the banana peel of Jesus Christ SUPERSTAR; a ripping satire on "inspirational teacher" films of all stripes, from DANGEROUS MINDS to DEAD POET'S SOCIETY.Steve Coogan (one of the most underrated comedians in film today) is Dana Marschz, high school drama teacher and wannabe thespian, who takes his art quite seriously - "To act is to live" - but finds his career spiraling down a drain of bit parts and herpes commercials.He lives with wife, Brie (Catherine Keener), and their roommate, Gary (David Arquette, in an obtuse role where Gary's only purpose is to steal Dana's wife and give Dana the second act rock bottom moment, "I lost my job! My wife left me!"...).His two star milky-white W.A.S.P. students, Rand (Skylar Astin) and Epiphany (Phoebe Strole, a junior Elisabeth Shue) are shocked when Dana's drama class inherits a group of seemingly underprivileged Mexican students.With this ragtag band of first-time actors, Dana doggedly starts rejuvenating and resurrecting the school's drama department, through the adversity of the drama budget being cancelled, his wife leaving him, and writing and producing his masterwork, HAMLET 2, a sequel to The Bard's immortal play. Dana's bizarre reimagining of HAMLET serves as a catharsis for Dana's father issues.Of Dana's class, the most foreboding gangsta of the bunch, Octavio (Joseph Julian Soria), turns out to be a powerful young actor with a searing sexuality, which Dana is shocked to discover, as are we the audience. This is the first cliché to be tipped on its head, with hilarious results: When Octavio's father (Marco Rodriguez) forbids Octavio to take part in Dana's play, it is not because he does not want him doing something creative - it is because he does not want Shakespeare's play sullied with a sequel! Whereas Dana thought Octavo's father would be a poor, ignorant Mexican who needed a talking to, he meets a rich author who gives him salient reasons why HAMLET 2 is a ridiculous idea.Dana actually meets the real Elisabeth Shue (as herself), sick of acting and working as a nurse. Being an inspiration of Dana's, Shue enters the fold as his Muse. Amy Poehler kills again in a small role, as a lawyer willing to sue anyone who gets in Dana's way of staging his magnum opus...Hamlet uses a time machine to go back and save everyone from dying, somehow hooking up with Jesus along the way.Play opens with the song, Raped in the Face, a favorite line of Dana's on how he feels most of the time. Then the boppy blasphemy of the title song, Rock Me, Sexy Jesus, where just the sight of Coogan as dancing Jesus in tight blue jeans and white wife-beater is enough to turn anyone Hindu."But the guy's got lats that make me feel gay." Coogan never says a word during this GREASE-ian song and dance number, "And he's got a swimmer's bod like nobody do," yet the moonwalking on water and The Crane as he "kicks Satan's ass" is priceless.When Hamlet tells Laertes of his time-travel plan, Rand (playing Laertes) utters the closest thing to a Shakespeare line, in an over-enunciated delivery that bears forbidden fruit covered in goat cheese: "Your madness must not unwatched go!" Written by Andrew Fleming and Pam Brady (of SOUTH PARK) and directed by Fleming, HAMLET 2 hits some poignant thematic notes in the final act of Dana's HAMLET 2, with everyone being saved (Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia) and Jesus advising Hamlet on forgiving his father, as Jesus must forgive his.By the time the real Albuquerque Gay Men's Choir is performing Elton's Someone Saved My Life Tonight, we're choking up in a powerful climax, where Hamlet gets the chance to say "Father, I forgive you!" to a ghostly image; with Jesus descending from the rafters on a cable, Coogan tragically lamenting, "Father, I forgive you... I forgive you." Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. And this madness must not unwatched go...
zetes
While definitely flawed, I liked this film quite a bit. A high school drama teacher (Steve Coogan, yet again trying to break into the American market) writes his first-ever original play for his students after many failures at adapting popular Hollywood movies. Unfortunately, this play, a sequel to Hamlet in which Hamlet and Jesus travel through time, is a little bit offensive for high school. The principal tries shutting it down, but Coogan and his students are eager to go on with it, even garnering defense from the ACLU. The film's main problem is that the play itself, which makes up the climax of the movie, isn't as much fun as you expect from the previous descriptions. Much of the stuff that leads up to the play is quite wonderful, though. I think Coogan's character is very well written, a former alcoholic who wanted to be a famous actor but wasn't talented, who has ended up with a small, deteriorating high school program, who has a wife (Catherine Keener, great) who misses out on no opportunity to emasculate him. Coogan does an American accent, which at first annoyed me, but which I eventually figured out lent a lot to his wound-up character. The high school students are also very funny. Elisabeth Shue has a role as herself which should have been funnier than it is, but it's nice to see her again.
takethe-lead-tb
Hamlet 2 was an awesome movie. Very witty, uplifting, and hilarious. The reviews definitely did not do it justice. I think most people that saw this movie had something else in mind when they went to see it so they all watched it with biased views, because they weren't getting what they thought they were. The characters were all played by good actors and the acting was really good. the only thing i didn't like was the fact that it was supposed to be in Tucson, AZ and it was filmed in Albuquerque, NM. The directors said it was due to the unwelcoming Tucson, which is definitely not true as there are actually many film studios in Tucson..
