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Maybe my love for anything related to William Sharkespeare's writing clouded my mind, because "Hamlet 2" is my favorite movie of 2008. Frankly, the little school comedy isn't for everybody. Some may think it's just a silly little movie that reminds one of the cornball old Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney scripts that begin with, "Hey, gang, let's put on a show!". Maybe that's another reason why I like it, because I come from the era in the 1930s and 1940s when enthusiastic high school kids did that kind of thing.

In fact, I was into acting back then, and members of our high school dramatic club thought we were the most talented people in the world, all headed for Hollywood or Broadway cash and glory. Actually one of us did make it, with a career highlight of portraying the Professor in "Gilligan's Island". The rest of us just did our wartime duties in the Army or Navy, and then went on to non-acting lives.

"Hamlet 2" stars Steve Coogan as a would-be actor who failed in his chosen profession, then became a high school teacher, where he also faces imminent failure. The school setting is in a mostly Hispanic area of Tuscon, Arizona, just 40 miles north of the Mexican border, where most students prefer to drop out than study. Actually, the movie was filmed in New Mexico, where just as many Latino and Latina teens were available as extras.

Only a couple of the most enthusiastic students are actually interested in taking the dramatics course, while others are reluctantly there because school cost-cutting dropped many of their more preferable subjects to study. When budget tightening continues, school officials tell drama teacher Dana Marschz (Coogan) they're considering cutting out his course and firing him. Desperate, he dreams up a crazy idea he feels will make enough money in tickets to assure him of a job.

With his head full of dashed Hollywood hopes, and concluding that all successful plays and movies should have sequels, he decides the most successful play in history needs another chapter. Therefore, why not a sequel to Hamlet? Modernized and musicalized, and with a ridiculous religious theme added, it is accompanied by the haunting hymn, "Rock Me Sexy Jesus".

Marschz writes "Hamlet 2", but even he has enough sense to know that the original play ended with just about everyone dead except the pallbearers. Therefore, he figures, why not have the Prince's death revoked by the intervention of Jesus Christ returning to earth to rewrite the tale. Not just any Savior, but a mod one with musical talent and superstar looks. The kids take hold of the idea with great enthusiasm

The other actors in the movie are just about as talented and enthusiastic as Coogan. Additionally, as part of the script's unending craziness, real Hollywood star Elisabeth Shue portrays her real life self. In the story, she has left Hollywood behind to become a school nurse, as if that would ever be likely.

When the play is staged in the school's auditorium, officials are so offended by the sacrilegious and profane themes, they try to shut it down before the first performance is completed. However, Marschz and his enthusiastic teen actors move the production to a beat-up warehouse. There it becomes an instant hit, and as its fame spreads, performing to sell-out houses, comparable to what happened to "Jesus Christ Superstar" in the 1970s. After wildly-interested reporters and TV cameras from all over the country converge on Tucson, the failed actor is on his way to fame and fortune. Well, if it happened to Mickey and Judy, at least we hope that's what will happen to Marschz and his troupe of talented kids.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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