Instead of trying to shock its audience, co-writer/ director Andrew Fleming’s Hamlet 2 is determined to laugh at anyone still capable of being shocked. Only the desensitized are sane, laughing at the unbalanced outbursts of the caricatures of right wing, neo-conservatives that have gone woefully unchallenged for some time now. In the eyes of Fleming and co-writer Pam Brady, if you hate drama, are gaga for Jesus, or are afraid of minorities, you’re very funny. If only that were true.
Hamlet 2 thinks it has the right (meaning left), forward-thinking attitude, which makes up for the fact that it doesn’t say anything very incendiary or even very funny (as one fledgling gang-banger, er, drama student says, “It doesn’t matter what talent we lack, what matters is our enthusiasm.”). It’s so above being truly inflammatory that it prefers to chuckle at unmemorable dick jokes, ethnic stereotypes and lots and lots of loud pratfalls as if being jaded were an excuse for being loud and vacant.
The biggest purveyor of disappointing histrionics is the film’s hero, Dana Marschz (comedian Steve Coogan). He’s a failed actor and drama teacher who needs one big hit to bring him back on top. To do so, he unwittingly writes a not-so-incendiary sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet that includes a time machine, Jesus and a gay male chorus. He’s a small fish in a smaller pond that thinks he can bluff his way to success with cheap material disguised as theatrics (after kicking a garbage can into a girl’s face, he excuses his actions’ melodrama by saying, “It was stupid but it was also theater”).
True to the film’s spirit, Marschz isn’t trying to stir the pot with his inflammatory but infantile ideas (Christ has a cell phone! Low riders on stage! A musical number about being raped in the face! Gay men singing! Laugh harder!). His head is so far up his own ass that he just assumes his artistic vision will be automatically understood. To him, the shock of his play is only important in so far as it is stirring and innovative. Hamlet 2 is neither.
This isn’t to say that the film isn’t funny, just not for more than a few minutes at a time. The strength of its performers is almost enough to make its half on-target jokes more funny than they really are. Catherine Keener, Amy Poehler and Elisabeth Shue provide some very funny scenes of nervous self-loathing and Coogan is infrequently funny, even if Dan Marschz isn’t.
Coogan is probably the biggest disappointment of the bunch though. Marschz’s story is like an inverted version of Coogan’s career, starting off with mediocrity and ending up with the world at his feet. Since his dizzyingly funny role as Alan Partridge, Coogan’s move to Hollywood has handed him a slew of cameos and insipid supporting roles in feel-good trash like Around the World in 80 Days, Night at the Museum and, if the trailer is any indicator, the overstuffed snoozefest that will be Tropic Thunder.
Mediocre characters like Dana Marschz are a painful reminder that Hollywood just doesn’t seem to know what to do with exceptional British comedians like Coogan, Simon Pegg or Ricky Gervais. Rather than give them good material, they’re either thrust into a garish spotlight or banished to the sidelines. If Dana Marschz, Coogan’s first real lead role in an American production, really is Coogan’s road to Hollywood stardom, he’s better off as a sniveling sidekick.
Both Marschz and Hamlet 2 outstay their welcome and the worst kind of bad joke is a very long bad joke. What makes a bad joke enjoyable is its brevity, simplicity and, yes, its bawdiness. Amping up the latter does not mean that the former two qualities are unnecessary. It’s better than being raped in the face but so are a lot of other things that don’t require you to hand over $12 for admission.