Hamlet 2

It’s like Waiting For Guffman – only funny

Picked up by Focus Features at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, Hamlet 2 is one of the funniest inappropriate indie comedies of the year.

Steve Coogan, most recently known for playing the unprepared director in Tropic Thunder, plays a failed actor teaching theatre in a Tucson high school. After producing several horrible school plays based on major Hollywood movies, the school board decides to cut the theatre department after the ongoing season.

In order to save the program, the recovering alcoholic teacher and his misfit theatre geeks commit themselves to putting on a controversial original play, Hamlet 2 – a musical sequel to Shakespeare’s classic.

Throughout Hamlet 2, you rarely see scenes from the play or hear much about the plot. You mostly just hear about the abstract plot points, like Hamlet and company using a time machine to visit such historical figures as Albert Einstein and Jesus Christ. But when you see the finished production near the end of the film, it is completely worth the wait.

Although the trailers for Hamlet 2 mostly show offensive and religiously blasphemous R-rated content, there is a whole lot more to the film than just that. Hamlet 2 is a brilliant commentary on the entertainment business and what they find acceptable and unacceptable – even before having seen the finished product. And amidst all the satyr, Hamlet 2 never loses a bit of its laugh-out-loud comedy.

Photo credit: Focus Features