REVIEW: Hamlet 2 — R

The story

Unsuccessful movie actor Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) teaches drama at West Mesa High School in Tucson. His life is unraveling. Wife Brie (Catherine Keener) desperately wants a child, but Dana is sterile. West Mesa Principal Rocker (Marshall Bell) says the school has no money and cancels drama. Rand Posin (Skylar Astin) refuses to play Laertes in "Hamlet 2," Dana's musical sequel to Shakespeare's play, because Laertes is gay. Evicted from the school's Snackatorium, Dana rehearses his play in the gym while the girls' volleyball team practices. Tucson courts order Dana to close down the play.

Can Dana hold his life together? Will "Hamlet 2" go on? What about Brie and Gary the Boarder (David Arquette)? Find answers at this irreverent - "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus" is its big song - politically incorrect, rude and funny comedy.

Actors

British comic star Steve Coogan is very funny as manic Dana Marschz. A failure as an actor - we see three of his wretched TV ads - he's also an uninspiring teacher. When he has a breakdown in class, a student asks, "Is he acting?" "No," says theater protégé Rand, "He's not that good." But Coogan is great and holds "Hamlet 2" together. (You can see Coogan now as a bad film director in Ben Stiller's "Tropic Thunder.")

Also funny are Skylar Astin as Rand, sexually ambivalent drama teacher's pet, and Phoebe Strole as earnest theater student Epiphany Sellers. Elizabeth Shue plays herself. Fed up with Hollywood insincerity and hype, she's become a nurse at the Prickly Pear Fertility Clinic. Marshall Bell is angry Principal Rocker, Catherine Keener is frustrated Brie Marschz, and SNL's Amy Poehler is ACLU lawyer Cricket Feldstein. "Whether the play's any good," she says, "is irrelevant." Joseph Julian Sovia plays time-traveling Hamlet in the play within the movie. Shea Pepe is Noah Sapperstein, caustic ninth-grade theater critic.

Other comments

"Hamlet 2" is funny, irreverent, politically incorrect and unhinged. Alone in the theater, I laughed out loud. Director/writer Andrew Fleming and co-writer Pam Brody (from "South Park") are smart and funny when they're on target - as they are most of the time. The film references "Mr. Holland's Opus," "Dead Poets Society," and "Dangerous Minds," but it's not a send-up. Fleming says, "We didn't want to parody inspirational-teachers movies, we wanted to make a movie about a guy who thinks he's living an inspirational-teacher movie."

See this sleeper and you'll recognize its debt to Mel Brooks' classic "The Producers" (1968). Only 92 minutes, "Hamlet 2" is R-rated for language, sex, nudity, drugs and, I would add, irreverence.

Final words

Not your high school Shakespeare,

"Hamlet 2" is a blast,

Irreverent comic script,

And very funny cast.