MOVIE: Hamlet 2

Rating: Expecting More
Viewed: Friday Sept. 28, 2008
Crossroads Cheap Theater
Rotten Tomato Rating: 63%
Mine: Lower, Probably about 40%
EW: B+ cag: C-
Genre: Comedy
Released Aug. 27, 2008
R (1 hr. 32 min.)
Biggest Hit of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival

I couldn't wait to see this movie. It's set in Tucson (although filmed in NM and Mesa, the name of the high school, is near Phoenix).

We spend the first 2/3 of the movie laughing at this poor schmuck who loves movies and, though he has had a few roles. is not a very good actor. So he and his wife (the wonderful Catherine Keener) move to Tucson where he becomes a HS drama teacher to an adoring class of two. You feel badly laughing at him, but it's eaither that or roll your eyes.

The last 1/3 of the movie is the best. A group of Hispanic students have joined them - their extra curricular activities have been cut - and they produce Hamlet 2, a play that our protagonist has written - about what would have happened if there'd been a time machine and everyone hadn't died at the end of the original Halmlet. It was great! It was a musical -- the number "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" was a HOOT!

Lots of cuts and slurs about Tucson. Grrrrr. Gary, the "boring" boarder who runs off with Catherine Keener was an unrecongnizable David Arquette. That was fun. Elizabeth Shue is a herself as a nurse that's fed up with Hollywood. There's a LOT of great stuff in this movie, but there's enough not-great stuff to overshadow it. Darn. It was entertaining, but I wouldn't watch it again. (I WILL download Sexy Jesus, though...)