This poor movie. Another premised based bait-and-switch, a'la Be Kind Rewind. I'll explain. You hear about "Be Kind Rewind", two video store guys have to remake all kinds of Hollywood classics, and Michel Gondry is directing! This is going to be a beautiful visual experience with two solid comedic actors at the helm! Then you go and see it and it turns out that the actual movie making part of the film is like 10 minutes and that most of the film is Danny Glover walking around talking about "community". You hear about "Hamlet 2" and you think, "Woah! That sounds hilarious! A sequel to Hamlet! I can't wait to see how they figure that one out!" Then you go and see it and it turns out that the movie is actually about this guy, who is played to absolute perfection by Steve Coogan who I could watch read the phone book if someone would just bloody film it, and he's got issues with his dad and there's maybe some kind of storyline thing going on with his wife and oh he's got all these troubled kids to teach suddenly because they cut the other electives at his Arizona High School. The problem that runs throughout the film is that it plays like half of it is missing. Things are referenced or mentioned that were never explained. David Arquette is a body builder? Apparently. But you wouldn't know except from his line while departing the film altogether regarding a protein shake in the fridge while he carries his vitamin powders. Oh that kid who does the technical stuff is some kind of acid king/drug dealer/party planner? Great, but don't tell us that or explain it to us until the film is half over suddenly have people talking about him like he's been a major character this whole time. Hey here's some title cards to break up the film, whoops, now we inexplicably have stopped using them. Hey, here's a narrator narrating, whoops, now he's inexplicably disappeared from the film as well! This film also can't tell if it wants to be a foul mouthed hard R rated comedy or if it wants to be an inspirational pg13 comedy, its too yucky high school inspirational (the bad kids come together to do something really great and end up liking their teacher they were formerly mean to, oh and their behavior change is completely and totally inexplicable, most of the things in this movie are inexplicable and not in a good David Lynch kind of way, but in a , "Man, no one paid attention to editing this did they?" kind of way) to be a hard R comedy and it's too foul mouthed and r rated to be an inspirational high school movie. AND the worst thing is that the whole big build up, about Hamlet bleepin' 2 is that you barely see any of the play, the trailer makes it look like there are two parts to the film, they decide to put on the play and then they put it on. But in reality the actual play is just about the last 10 minutes and yes, the stuff we see is funny, but it's barely anything at all. So much humor could've been pulled from the brilliant premise that is Hamlet 2, but instead it's glossed over, relying on "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" and "Raped in The Face" to carry the brunt of the musical humor, other than that, it's clunky and forced. Everything in this movie is half a**ed except for Steve Coogan's performance. The editing, the writing, all really disappointing for such a smart premise. All that being said, I did laugh quite a bit, but the incredibly poor quality of the film itself was distracting. Another film killed by it's all too apparent desire to be a "cult classic". If this film had had no budget and was made independently it might be an immortal piece of comedy gold, coming from some random film weirdo's twisted psyche, but instead it's desperately pandering to the void left by the death of independent film in America. Watch it on DVD while doing something else.
