Hamlet 2 **
Andrew Fleming, 2008
US
@ Pacific Place
This film presents, I think, a perfect approach to working with a moribund genre. As opposed to the series of spoofs ending in
... Movie, you know, scary, superhero, etc. Most brilliantly, Steve Coogan's idiot drama teacher lists off inspirational teacher stories constantly, making clear that he wastes no critical thinking on his appreciation of anything that comes from Hollywood, cleverly taking the place of actual references included over the course of the plot, which in this post-
Simpsons &
Family Guy world I'd be happy to never witness again.
Initially I agreed with Kenneth Turan: "It's uneven, but the hits are so dead-on that the misses don't seem to matter." But then I noticed that the characters are all remarkably consistent. That is, we may need to take a little while to adjust to these characters before we can laugh at them well. Steve Coogan plays a character who is simultaneously (as above) idiotic, unaware, super-sensitive, kind, delusional, self-loathing and self-deprecating but perhaps not quite enough, and even remarkably unruffled and steady. It's a lot to wrap your head around after, say, too many Will Ferrell comedies.
In terms of spectacle, the last 20 minutes or so are the most absorbing of any I've seen in a long time. In terms of voices, Steve Coogan's impossibly rich, heavily British (think Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen) narration at the beginning is in hilarious contrast to his wheedling American (Canadian?) accent. Critics have complimented it, but there is something about his R's that just doesn't feel quite right to me, like he modeled his dialogue on old Hollywood movies or something, I don't know. In terms of genre, it meshes the aforementioned inspirational teacher drama with the 40-is-the-new-toddler immature male comedy. It plays with convention, but in a richer fashion than the last Harold & Kumar movie. A Sundance movie that puts its quirkiness to fantastic, demented use instead of blowing it on a cheap, run-of-the-mill indie dramedy.
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Kenneth Turan reviewLabels: 2 Stars, 2008, Andrew Fleming, US
