This thing is hilarious.

The problem with a sequel to Hamlet is that everybody interesting is dead by the end.  That doesn’t discourage Dana Marschz, a Tucson high school drama teacher, from trying to save the school’s theater program with a sequel named Hamlet 2.  The shop class builds him a time machine, and he brings back the dead characters, plus Jesus, Einstein and the very much alive Hilary Clinton.  Music is by the Tucson Gay Men’s Chorus. 



Hamlet 2 stars the British comedian Steve Coogan, who with this film and Tropic Thunder may develop a fan base in America.  He’s sort of a gangling, flighty, manic Woody Allen type, but without the awareness of his neurosis.  Oh, he knows he has problems.  He’s a recovering alcoholic, so broke he and his wife have to take in a boarder, and when his drama class is thrown out of the school lunchroom, they have to meet in the gym during volleyball practice. 

Anyone who has ever been involved in high school theatrical productions will recognize a few elements from Hamlet 2, here much exaggerated.  There are the teacher’s pets who usually play all the leads.  The rebellious new student who’s sort of an ethnic Brando.  The pitiful costumes.  The disapproving school board, which wants to discontinue the program.  The community uproar over the shocking content (gay men singing Rock Me, Sexy Jesus?).  The ACLU lawyer, named Cricket (Amy Poehler), who flies to the rescue, but seems to have a tendency toward anti-Semitism.  And above all the inspired, passionate, more than slightly mad drama teacher. 



Mr. Marschz (to pronounce it, you have to sort of buzz at the end) has seen too many movies like Dead Poets Society and Mr. Holland’s Opus, and tries to inspire his students with his bizarre behavior.  This takes little effort, especially after he starts wearing caftans to school because his wife (Catherine Keener) thinks he’s impotent because jockey shorts cut off his circulation.  Principal Rocker (Marshall Bell) is his unremitting enemy, Octavio (Joseph Julian Soria) is the brilliant but rebellious student (he comes across as street tough, but is headed for Brown).  Rand (Skylar Astin) and Epiphany (Phoebe Strole) are his special pets, now feeling left out.

 

And then there is Elisabeth Shue.  Yes, the real Elisabeth Shue, Oscar nominee for Leaving Las Vegas.  When Dana goes to the hospital for treatment of his broken f-you finger, he tells the nurse she looks like his favorite actress, Elisabeth Shue.  “That’s because I am Elisabeth Shue,” she says, explaining that she got tired of all the BS in show biz and decided to help people by becoming a nurse.  She agrees to visit his class.  You can imagine the questions she gets. 



Chaotic rehearsals and legal maneuvers by Cricket succeed in getting the play staged — not in the school, but in an abandoned railroad shed.  Some of the characters may have the same names as characters in Hamlet, but that’s about as far as the resemblance goes.  No danger of plagiarism charges.  The Gay Men’s Chorus is very good, Dana himself not so good in the role of Jesus, moon-walking on the water. 



Much depends on the verdict of my favorite character in the movie, the critic of the high school paper (Shea Pepe), a freshman who is about 5 feet tall.  Having eviscerated Dana’s previous production, he helpfully gives him advice (he should stop remaking movies like Erin Brockovich and do something original).  Hamlet 2 is original, all right.  But will the kid like it? 

The movie is an ideal showcase for the talents of Coogan, who you may remember from A Cock and Bull Story (2005), the film about a film of Tristram Shandy where only one person involved in the production had ever read the book.  He is a TV legend in the UK, but not so uber-Brit that he doesn’t travel well.  He seems somewhat at home in Tucson, which, let it be said, has got to be a nicer town than anybody in this movie thinks it is. 

 

Hamlet 2

Three stars



Stars: Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener and David Arquette

Director: Andrew Fleming

Rated: R for language including sexual references, brief nudity and some drug content

Elegy fails in the end

Despite interesting characters and nice performances Elegy’s payoff feels forced

 

Ben Kingsley, who can play just about any role, seems to be especially effective playing slimy intellectuals.  Elegy is a film that could have been made for him, although by the time it’s over, Penelope Cruz has slipped away with it and transformed Kingsley’s character in the process.  It’s nicely done.

 

Kingsley plays David Kepesh, a professor of literature whose classroom manner seems designed to seduce the young student of his choice from each new class.  He narrates the film and is not shy about describing his methods.  To stay out of trouble, he waits until the semester is over and the grades have been given, and then throws a party at his book- and art-filled apartment, where he singles out his prey and dazzles her with flattering insights, intellectual bravado and an invitation to meet sometime — just for coffee or a drink and conversation, you know. 



His target this semester is the lithesome Consuela, played by Penelope Cruz as a Cuban-American who is old enough to know better but discerning enough to see that there may really be something to old Kepesh after all.  The professor appoints himself her tutor to all the mysteries of life, art, New York, music and sex.  And for a while they mesh and enjoy each other. 



But David grows obsessed with jealousy, convinced Consuela is seeing someone else — younger, of course, and more handsome and virile.  He even accidentally drops in at a dance he knows she’s attending to check up on her.  His distrust spoils everything because she cannot abide not being trusted. 



And then — the movie takes a dramatic turn, which I will not reveal, even though it contains all the deepest emotions and real feelings of the story.  And in these scenes, Cruz is quietly powerful and very true.  You understand why the Spanish director, Isabel Coixet, chose Cruz instead of, say, a 19-year-old. An actress needs depth and the experience of life to play these scenes, and Cruz has them. 



The film is based on a novel by Philip Roth, who has just about exhausted my desire to read his stories about young babes falling for older, wiser intellectuals like, say, Philip Roth.  I was reading his Library of America volume about Zuckerman recently and finally just put it down and said to the book: Sorry, Phil, but I cannot read one more speech founded on the f-word.  I don’t object to the f-word itself, but sorry, I’ve simply been overserved. 



That Elegy is not simply a fantasy about the horny old rascal and the comely maid is to its credit.  That it sees Manhattan clearly as a setting is also an advantage, since it is a place where we believe things like this are likely to happen.  And then there is a wealth of supporting characters, notably Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), no spring chicken, who has been David’s mistress for years.  She can’t believe there’s another woman in his life and launches a barrage of f-words, but she makes the character real and poignant.  I also liked Dennis Hopper as George, the old pal he has coffee with, who attempts to bring sanity into David’s behavior, but despairs.  And Peter Sarsgaard, as David’s son, with problems of his own and a father who has become not only an embarrassment but, worse, an irrelevancy. 



The movie is not great.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe the payoff plays too much like a payoff.  Consuela asks David to do something I think we might be better off hearing about, instead of seeing.  I’m not sure.  The movie is obviously going for a big emotional charge at the end and might have been more effective with a quieter one.  But you decide. 

 

Elegy

Three stars



Stars: Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley and Dennis Hopper

Director: Isabel Coixet

Rated: R for sexuality, nudity and language