The first 10 minutes of this movie was laughing-out-loud funny and the rest of the movie was not far behind. I am a big Steve Coogan fan and this is probably his best comedy. Throw in Elizabeth Shue playing herself and Amy Poehler as an ACLU lawyer and you have a quite a movie. Steve Coogan's character writes the Hamlet 2 play for his High School drama class. It is a time-traveling musical which features Jesus Christ in a major role. The musical numbers are done very well with some very funny lyrics.Some of my favorite scenes involve the Steve Coogan character talking with his harshest critic - a young student at the school who offers Coogan some sage advice.

Hamlet 2 is a comedy about Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), a failed actor turned drama teacher. When his class is lacking in grades, and his class is about to be shut down, he makes the greatest, and most offensive play of all time. It is Hamlet 2, in which Jesus builds a time machine to bring back everyone from Hamlet back to life. The movie is extremely offensive, which didn't even matter so much as that the film doesn't have the huge amount of laughs it should of had. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty funny. Catherine Keener plays Dana's wife, Brie. David Arquette plays Brie's crazy friend, Gary, and Elisabeth Shue plays Elisabeth Shue. The supporting cast gets a lot of laughs, but the movie itself revolves around a lot of flat jokes. The really, really, really huge laughs come from the play at the end where they play the song, Rock Me Sexy Jesus. The play is the foundation of laughs for this movie. It makes us consider what plays we're really watching. That said, racism jokes and people getting hurt jokes go a little too far. This movie started to push the boundaries of what was funny or not. I'm not saying this is a terrible movie, just a movie that has nowhere close to the amount of laughs it should have.

The biggest surprise of my weekend was Hamlet 2. It's a stupid concept that went all the way round back to genius again. Great movie. Hilarious performances from Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener and Elisabeth Shue. Clever when it needed to be, sincere at times, and out and out stupid-funny in the best way at other times.I guess a big concern with this movie is mindless vulgarity, which I personally have no problem with, but there's really none of that here. Sure, the main writer worked on South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut, and Team America - but Hamlet 2 has a lo more charm.I gave it a 9. It does what a comedy is supposed to do - made me laugh out loud several times!

As someone who would watch Steve Coogan in almost anything and as an English student, I was really looking forward to this. "A comedy about a lousy theatre teacher who puts on a sequel to Hamlet? How could it miss?", I thought. If the film had focused more on the play instead of trying to be a mish-mash of Dangerous Minds, School of Rock and any number of misguided comedies about naive man-children, it would've been fairly awesome. Instead the film tries too hard to be too many things and fails to do any of them well.Firstly, what's up with Coogan's accent? Personally I would've preferred it if he played a British teacher in an American school (if nothing else, it would've made the Shakespeare connection funnier), but instead he puts on an admittedly passable American accent that I found unnecessary and jarring. His performance is fantastic besides that one quibble, although he isn't given much to work with.I fully agree with some of the other commenters when they say that Catherine Keener and David Arquette are pointless here, which is a shame as I love Keener in movies like Living in Oblivion and 40 Year Old Virgin, but she is totally wasted here as a relentless shrew. In fact, apart from the scene where Elizabeth Shue explains her reasons for leaving acting, Coogan's is the only really good performance here, with the supporting cast being mostly indistinguishable.The aspects of the plot to do with the drama class (ie. most of the plot) are especially banal and forced. I would've enjoyed it more if, instead of being landed with a group of "troubled teens" (can we please rest this dusty old cliché for a damn change?), Coogan had a class of students like the two suck-ups he has at the start. Riffing on Dangerous Minds just gives the film a very cheesy edge, when a film about a dedicated drama class putting on a horrible play would be far more entertaining than an awkward attempt at commentary on arts funding in public schools.Speaking of the plot, the main thing that stopped me from enjoying this film was the fact that practically every aspect of the plot seemed half-written. Coogan's students fall into line for no concrete reason other than narrative convenience, there seems to be no reason why his marriage is still somewhat intact and most of the jokes are stilted and unfunny.I tried really hard to like this, but ultimately it just wasn't good enough. A let-down.