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'Hamlet 2' falls short

By Carolina Astrain
Aug. 29, 2008

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"Hamlet 2," in many ways, is like eating Ramen for dinner. You know you're settling for less, but on the bright side, it's cheap and easy. Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) adds the artificial flavoring, essential to this soup-in-a-cup concoction.

Like Ramen, "Hamlet 2" is also brutally honest in how god-awful this movie really is. And it's not only this honesty that wins director Andrew Fleming brownie points. Fleming must have a child enrolled in the public school system, because this is the area where his message shines. Public schools nationwide are being dealt heavy blows to their extracurricular programs.

In short, Marschz leads a troupe of kids who are trying to raise money to save the school's theater program by writing a sequel to Hamlet. This is the one shard of glimmering hope Fleming can take with him to the box office.

Everyone else seems like they're just in it for the ride. None of Marschz's students excel, but that doesn't really seem to be their prerogative. Catherine Keener, playing Mrs. Marschz, gives her most unflattering performance yet and does little to add to the depth in Dana's home life. His entire personal life could have been left out of the story.

Coogan does not share stage space well with his fellow actors, and he is only found alone during moments of desperation.

In short, I love watching Coogan cry. Also, none of these students are memorable, except for the infantile school paper's arts critic. The teacher's pet was overwhelmingly confounding and the standard white girl from the suburbs was equally annoying. The Latino "thugged out" students also disappoint. Octavio (Joseph Julian Soria), the leader of the pack, is funny to watch, but delivers an overall deflated act. He starts off as a bad boy, who later sheds his tough exterior to expose a soft, sensitive side - big surprise.

The racial tensions between the two preppy students and the frightening "ethnic" group of kids are ripe at first bite, but the humor begins to mold as the show goes on. Jokes are evenly dispersed, pelting attacks at the Latino community, white sheltered children, low-income white people and Jewish males, as seen in Amy Poehler's character Cricket Feldstein. These are all pretty funny jokes, but they're lost in the madness of the acts.

The story seems so sloppy and slapped together that one wonders if Fleming and fellow writer Pam Brady cooked it up in 47 hours or less, like Marschz did with "Hamlet 2" in the film.

The ending reminded me of the conclusion of the "The Lizzie McGuire Movie." Yes, there is a slap-in-face-to-society kind of line lashed out by Coogan, but the glittering smiles of his born again students are what return the audience to the half-baked ingenuity of a Disney film. Even Coogan's exit leaves the same kind of guilty essence of Ramen's artificial flavoring packet - and what's worse is that you won't be able to get the haunting taste out of your mouth until the morning after.

 

Harper, Evans, Wade and Netemeyer