To be or not to be an arts supporter, that is the timely question at hand in the clever comedy Hamlet 2. Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) is a failed actor-turned-drama-teacher working for gas money in a city where dreams go to die—Tucson, Arizona. And does he ever suffer the slings and arrows of a most outrageous fortune.
Our tragic hero Marschz falls from the exalted status of herpes-cream-hocker to a drama teacher shooting blanks in the sack. This Man amongst men roller-skates to his racially tense high school wearing a caftan—obviously sans briefs—on the orders of his wife’s ticking biological clock. Here, he stages abysmal school productions, all dead-end adaptations of Academy Award winners. The result of this unforgettable melange is a comedy of errors that gives even Shakespeare a run for his money.
The bane of Marschz’s existence is the pre-pubescent school newspaper arts reviewer whose critiques leave Marschz fuming in his roller-rink, thespian-chic attire. But with all secondary school arts programs slated to be axed, this kid-critic offers Marschz, in a moment of emotional volatility worthy of the Prince of Denmark himself, a nugget of sage advice: Give them something worth saving.
So, Marschz takes it upon himself to write the sequel to the Bard’s great tragedy. Using a time machine motif to get around the unfortunate fact that everyone dies in the end, Coogan stages an encounter between Hamlet and Jesus, giving the characters the chance to reconcile themselves with their fathers and save their loved ones. Jesus, unfortunately, does not receive salvation; walking out of the time machine at the end of the play he muses that his father will crucify him when he finds out where he’s been.
With everyone jumping on Disney’s High School Musical band wagon, Hamlet 2—the play within a movie—twists the tween hit anthem “We’re All In This Together” into such barn-burning, foot-stompers as “Rock me Sexy Jesus” and “Raped in the Face” with brief interludes of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” from Flashdance, sung by Tucson’s local gay men’s choir, accompanied by Marschz himself on the Fisher-Price baby keyboard.
But Hamlet 2 is about more than Jesus jokes and Shakespearian slapstick. It’s a movie about the status of the arts. With our federal election fast-approaching, this is a rather topical subject.
The movie continually calls attention to itself as a piece of drama (we could call it metadrama, if we were jargon-obsessed keeners). Boom mics and set lights constantly fall into the frame, the plot is explicitly subdivided into five distinct acts and, at one point, Marschz even bemoans that his pathetic life is a parody of a tragedy, which is exactly what this flick is. Consciously or not, this film makes the viewer aware that whether or not they’re an ordinary person, they’re engaging with art.
Hamlet 2 also voices the need for the arts in a cohesive society. Marschz’s production, asinine though it may sound, brings the disparate racial groups at West Mesa High School together to unite under a common goal. The play highlights the need for vibrant dialogue—not stifling monologue—within our culture. Even if it means that riot police, firefighters and the miffed religious right are violently shocked and awed by high school theatre productions, the shows must go on.
However you want to approach Hamlet 2—either as a cheap laugh or thrilling social statement—it’s a raucous good time. The closing shot of the production’s cast trotting through NYC for the opening of Hamlet 2 on Broadway, has Marschz—ever the poetic pedant—imparting to his students that their lives will be magical because no matter where they go, it will always be better than Tucson. Like Billy Shakes said, some have greatness thrust upon them, and Hamlet 2 is, indeed, one of those greatnesses.
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