by Everett Jensen

Created on: September 12, 2008

Hamlet 2
directed by Andrew Fleming
written by Andrew Fleming and Pam Brady
starring Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener, Amy Poehler, Joseph Julian Soria, Skylar Astin, Phoebe Strole, Melonie Diaz, Arnie Pantoja, Michael Esparza, Elizabeth Shue, David Arquette.

An inspirational comedy replete with natural humor and terrific performances, Hamlet 2 is a rare find in this era of gross-outs and blatant cheats. It's the real deal and unfortunately it probably isn't coming to a theater near you.

For reasons unknown this film was not warmly received by the public after it played at Sundance and was purchased for $10 million by Focus Features. Indeed, it tanked at the box office and has made a swift exit at many theaters. It's all a terrible shame because this film wins on every level. It stars Steve Coogan and in this film much of the humor comes from just watching him react to what's in front of him. This film displays an uncanny ability to catch Coogan in the most ridiculous faces. Mostly this is captured in the first part of the film before his character, Dana Marschz (just hearing other people trying to pronounce the name is funny), hits on the idea for putting on the musical. When he's lowly and down and out the looks on his face say everything you need to know about the wretchedness of his life. He's married to Brie (Keener) and they've taken in a boarder named Gary (Arquette) to help cover expenses. It's immediately clear that Gary and Brie are slowly moving toward an irreversible something and the film does a good job keeping it on the low.

Dana used to work at Rite-Aid and one can imagine a life torn with the promise of catastrophes unfolding and relentless. He used to be an actor and the film opens with scenes from two commercials and a low-budget film he starred in. As this was the extent of his work in an artform he is mightily passionate about he took a job teaching high school drama. All his plays were based on popular movies and they were not well received. He's got two impossibly white students named Rand (Astin) and Epiphany (Strole) who are the only ones left in his class. Then a group of inner city kids who have been stripped of all their extra-curricular options swarm in. This mostly Latino contingent proves difficult to manage and Epiphany is caught making a number of unwitting racist comments referring to the new students as "you people." This causes a ruckus but the kids work out their differences and prepare themselves for the play which Dana has written

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