Hamlet 2 (2008)

Sometimes your just in the mood for a little light hearted blasphemy, and in Hamlet 2 you’ll defiantly find it, both religious and PC. Actually this is a deceptively smart movie, a kind of Ed Wood meets Six Feet Under. British comedian Steve Coogan, who I had basically dismissed out of hand before observing him in a brief role in Sofia Coppala’s Marie Antoinette, plays a never-was actor (career highlights include a juicer commercial and episode of Xena) just barley subsisting financially as a Tucson high school drama teacher, whose enthusiasm far outstrips his talent. When the financially strapped school system decides to scrape his program, and by extension his job, Coogan decides to re-invigorate interest in the arts by having his ‘rag tag’ class perform a sequel he wrote to Shakespear’s Hamlet. As you’ll recall pretty much everybody died at the end of the original Hamlet, but that’s not a problem when one employs dramatic devices such as a time machine, and a cell phone sporting Jesus Christ. The triumph of the movie, and the musical play within, is the concept, surpassingly well pulled off, that trash can be elevated to beauty, that art can be made of a mess if there’s a enough (for lack of a better word) sincerity to it. The hodge poge of satirized tripe that fills the screen and stage proves a metaphor for forgiveness and transcendence probably more effective then the pretentious guff of many a would be art genius, just like Coogan’s character, its all self referential to a absurdly sublime degree. So all I can say is: "Oh, Shue." 4 out of 5.