Not as bad as it looks. Really!!!
This stars Steve Coogan, who is best known from some British television work that is barely known in the United States.
It tells a story of a talentless actor working as a high school drama teacher in Tucson, Arizona who is trying to save the drama department, which is basically him and his students.
It has the usual clichés of the students bonding at the end, and the pulling it together spirit of theatre experience. Given that if you have worked in theatre you will no doubt in enjoy this film; as it has all the right moves as lets say Noises Off. With that in said, I only know this because I had an ex-girlfriend who worked in an improv place in Austin Texas during her high school in the 1990’s.
The movie has a couple of things working for it. Coogan has a great talent of looking like a loser so much so that you feel a little bad for him, and he genuinely has some chemistry with his young cast.
The rest of the movie is supported by the supporting cast that really nails their bit parts. Catherine Keener plays his acerbic wife. Amy Poehler plays an ACLU lawyer. David Arquette and Elizabeth Shue around the cast of well-known actors. But I must mention the racially ambiguous actress Melonie Diaz who I am seeing in more and more movies and really liking. Maybe she is someone to look out for.
Like every movie of this sort, it climaxes with theatre piece of, you guessed it, Hamlet 2, which features a faux-blasphemous number called “Rock me sexy Jesus” Jesus portrayed as some Keanu Reeves character circa Point Break . This is about as blasphemous as any Christian fundamentalist youth retreat.
In conclusion, Hamlet 2 is barely good, but it works.
Boston