| Too little, too late Andrew Fleming's Hamlet 2 has its moments, but ends on a flat note
(Hamlet 2, now showing)
B-
| Brit export Steve Coogan continues to make good on the promise of his comically narcissistic UK television creation Alan Partridge with Hamlet 2, a goofily premised satire that mistakenly believes it has more to say about freedom of speech than it actually does.
Written by South Park alumnus Pam Brady and director Andrew Fleming (who previously handled the tonally similar Watergate spoof Dick), Hamlet 2 enables Coogan to take centre stage as Dana Marschz - a naïve, compunctious high-school drama teacher in Tucson, Ariz., who spends his time assembling productions of Hollywood dramas (such as Erin Brockovich) for his meager class of two.
When all of the other elective arts classes are cancelled, his empty classroom (actually, a corner of the cafeteria) grows exponentially to include a number of disinterested Latino students. With a sizable class now at his disposable, Marschz finally heeds the advice of a precocious, Roland Barthes-referencing Grade 9 student critic (Chris Makepeace look-a-like Shea Pepe) and attempts a musical sequel to the Shakespeare classic in which everybody dies at the end. (Hint: a time machine is involved.)
When a complex betrayal allows for a copy of the offensive script to land in the lap of the principal, the scheduled premiere is shut down and Marschz loses his job. A potty-mouthed civil liberties lawyer (Amy Poehler) soon picks up his cause, not for its artistic merit, but because it's an easy win: the subject matter, which deals with father-figure issues and political disenchantment in such risqué songs as Raped in the Face, is not as relevant as is Marschz's right to put on the show. It's not an entirely successful third-act introduction of a compassionate cause that has been unexplored in the previous hour - an hour content to revel in the insults and slapstick inanities unwittingly initiated by and delivered to the utterly clueless Marschz.
Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas) turns up to portray an alternative-universe version of herself, one where she's since quit the acting biz to become a nurse in the same sleepy, nowhere town. Marschz, being a failed actor who'd only gotten as far as Herpes commercials and forgettable villains on Xena: Warrior Princess before leaving Hollywood for Arizona, falls all over himself when he meets her, taking great joy in fawning over their craft and, of course, asking about Nicolas Cage.
It's a letdown, then, when the musical numbers turn out to be stabs at cheap sensationalism, the tame (if catchy) showstopper being the Jesus-as-Superstar finale, Rock Me Sexy Jesus. Fleming can't resist shots of his morally outraged audience members objecting and eventually relenting to the underlying message, as police squads and protests ring outside of the makeshift theatre.
By then it's too late. Coogan's aloof daydreamer has been relegated to the sidelines way too much for the film to regain composure. It sacrifices the character for the purpose of this misguided greater good, and becomes all the poorer for it.
— Aaron Graham |
Uptown
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