Dana Marshcz (Steve Coogan) is an actor. Well, he was an actor, and an absolutely terrible one at that. After squeezing his way into a handful of god-awful blink-and-you-miss-it TV roles as a young man, we join him a little further down the line, as the drama teacher at West Mesa High in Tucson Arizona. Whatever Dana Lacks in talent, he frantically tries to make up with his ludicrously ambitious and downright ridiculous school theatre remakes of American modern movie classics. With his last two disastrous stage adaptations (‘Erin Brockovich’ and ‘As Good As it Gets’) crucified as usual by the school paper’s fearsome 13 year old critic Noah, Dana is reduced to a blubbering wreck. But as Dana feels like he has nothing left to give, Noah inspires Dana to write something new… Something original…
That said, West Mesa High is certainly not RADA or NYU and since only 2 students actually attend Dana’s classes, one can imagine the lunacy of putting on Dana’s adventurous plays. But this year, due to an asbestos scare in a part of the school, computing, shop and ceramic classes are all cancelled, and Dana by default finally has a full class to teach, and an ensemble to put together. But they are not actors, nor do they want to be, so in a comedy twist on movies such as ‘Dead Poets Society’, ‘Dangerous Minds’ and ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’, Dana pulls out all the stops to mould this ramshackle bunch into a talented group of actors for his new original play: ‘HAMLET 2’.
Under the impression that the original Hamlet was a bit of a ‘downer’, Dana’s ambition was to give the characters of Shakespeare’s classic the chance to redeem themselves. “Everybody deserves a second chance” is Dana’s mission, as he justifies the inclusion of a time-machine in the play, to allow Hamlet to go back in time and prevent Gertrude from drinking the poison, and to stop Ophelia from drowning… Dick Cheney, Snoop Dog and even Jesus Christ are all characterised in the sequel, and the less that’s said about the Gertrude / Hamlet hand-job scene the better… Oh, and it’s a musical, to be accompanied by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Tucson.
With the whole of Tucson banging the doors down to get into opening night, and press from all over the country reporting on this extraordinary event, soon all hell breaks loose, not helped by the ‘2nd Avenue Angels’ (local gang) in charge of security. But despite it all – the show must go on.
Hilarious dialogue on every page, outrageous sight-gags and pratfalls throughout, and even a little room for romance, Hamlet 2 is ‘School of Rock’ meets ‘The Jerk’ with the razor-sharp R-rated humour of ‘Old School’, ‘Knocked Up’, ‘Superbad’ and the ’40 Year Old Virgin’.
