Get rid of any preconceived ideas about what a movie is supposed to be and enjoy the ride! Bright, innovative, irreverent, and totally unexpected, I thoroughly enjoyed the silliness, slapstick, and satire on various groups of society and the success of the emotionally almost broken. Fantastic premise and great cast, too.

Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) is a failed actor and recovering alcoholic who is teaching high school drama in Tucson. He's plagued by bad reviews by a little kid, his class is being canceled next semester, most of his students aren't interested in drama, and his wife Brie (Catherine Keener) is trying to get pregnant. He's desperate to revive his class so he decides to blow everyone away with an original play Hamlet 2, an inappropriate sequel to the Shakespeare play.Steve Coogan is hilariously pathetic and clueless. Elisabeth Shue does a funny cameo as herself. There are some really sadly pathetic funny moments. You just can't stop laughing at Steve. Everything is played up to its wacky craziness. Almost everybody is way over the top especially Steve Coogan. This is his movie all the way thru. Although Hamlet 2 actually need to be crazier.

A high school teacher wants to rejuvenate his drama class after years of being trashed, and now threatened with getting shut down. Well, he ends up getting more than shut down when the principal gets word of what's in his play -- crude sexual situations and blasphemy. But the students press on and decide they'll do it themselves.This film is great if you love racial humor, Christian humor, fertility humor, and all sorts of questionable tastes. We have some fine moments from Elisabeth Shue (playing a cynical version of herself), a discussion on Amy Poehler's balls, and a small role for David Arquette (which is probably good, as he can overshadow a project).The Latino parents are hilarious... objecting to "Hamlet 2" for the strangest of reasons, and it's nice to see some of the best advice coming from Little Sapirstein, a source of brilliance. An odd twist on the sage role.I love the ceaseless references to "The Lake House", "Erin Brockovich" and other contemporary pieces of rubbish... and the references to "Dead Poets Society" and "Dangerous Minds", which the film clearly draws influence from. Though, sadly, "Dead Poets" is the better film.In the end, the film is funny, but uneven. I enjoyed the off-color humor and the "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" song, but there were many dry parts... sometimes five or ten minutes of boring would go by. Had the pacing been slightly different, or a few more jokes thrown in, I'd call it a success... but it just didn't come out right.

This is a good movie, it's original, unpredictable, funny, it's just fun to watch. The cast is great, I thought everyone was really funny. The indy actors were all surprisingly good. I really appreciated the way the movie got resolved. There were some unanswered questions at the end but to be honest, there's been a lot of un-funny lately and this was a really good piece. I liked the set design, the acting, the play at the end was really fun. I can't think of a lot to criticize, some parts weren't super funny I guess, but overall the experience was very gratifying. People need to learn to not take themselves so seriously.I think the movie deserves a 7 but since it's at 6.5 right now I voted 8 to push it up lol.