film review: Hamlet 2
you know when you go to video ezy and there are shelves and shelves of ridiculously shit blockbuster films filling up wall space and then you spot one copy of a film you've never heard of with some interesting actors in it and you wonder "hmm, could this film be any good?" - that was the situation i found myself in the other day. the film in question was:
standing in the new release aisle i weighed up the potential pros and cons of this film, of which i knew nothing. the pros were solely comprised of the cast:
* steve coogan (pretty solidly excellent), catherine keener (always awesome), amy poehler (usually pretty good even with weak material), elizabeth shue (she was in the karate kid after all), & david arquette - who is also a con because he's married to courtney cox, but is a pro for his subtle but not insignificant comic abilities.
the cons seemed insurmountable:
* i'd never heard of it before
* the title just didn't seem funny
* the concept (a highschool drama teacher leads a rag tag bunch of disinterested teens in a production of his self-devised sequel to hamlet) smacked of potential stinker material
* all the bullshit reviews on the cover telling me how funny the film is - i don't need you to try and sell yourself to me with quotes from Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone or WQN(wtf?)
i wasn't sure what to make of the fact that it was from the co-creator of south park and team america... it just could've tipped the scales either way...
it was a tough call, but in the end my curiosity about what such a potentially great cast could pull off in each other's company got the better of me and i rented it. even as the menu screen came up on the DVD michelle commented "this could be a massive pile of shit, hey..." it was a tense moment. the film had quite a bit to prove...
... and, i was very pleasantly surprised! Hamlet 2 is pretty consistently strong the whole way through. coogan is daft without being annoying, and there are some hilarious scenes of his failed-actor-turned-drama-teacher doing some deep and emotional acting. catherine keener, whilst just playing yet another incarnation of the charming, likeable bitch role she seems to play in everything she's in these days still has some great moments, and she's just so awesome it's difficult not to go along for the ride. amy poehler makes the most out of what's essentially a cameo with some snappy one liners and her patented zest ("those Bible-humping protesters can suck a bag of dicks"), and david arquette is endearing as coogan and keener's dumb-ass meathead tenant gary. oh, and elizabeth shue is great as a bitter version of herself who's given up on Hollywood and is working at an IVF clinic.
Hamlet 2 takes the "white teacher offers life-affirming lessons to ghetto kids" cliche and inverts it into a pretty consistently funny un-PC comedy that's both self-aware and engaging. it's not the funniest film i've ever seen, but its a great film to watch with friends if you want something light, but with enough balls to go where it needs to in order to make you laugh.
thank you Hamlet 2 for totally not being a waste of my time!
standing in the new release aisle i weighed up the potential pros and cons of this film, of which i knew nothing. the pros were solely comprised of the cast:
* steve coogan (pretty solidly excellent), catherine keener (always awesome), amy poehler (usually pretty good even with weak material), elizabeth shue (she was in the karate kid after all), & david arquette - who is also a con because he's married to courtney cox, but is a pro for his subtle but not insignificant comic abilities.
the cons seemed insurmountable:
* i'd never heard of it before
* the title just didn't seem funny
* the concept (a highschool drama teacher leads a rag tag bunch of disinterested teens in a production of his self-devised sequel to hamlet) smacked of potential stinker material
* all the bullshit reviews on the cover telling me how funny the film is - i don't need you to try and sell yourself to me with quotes from Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone or WQN(wtf?)
i wasn't sure what to make of the fact that it was from the co-creator of south park and team america... it just could've tipped the scales either way...
it was a tough call, but in the end my curiosity about what such a potentially great cast could pull off in each other's company got the better of me and i rented it. even as the menu screen came up on the DVD michelle commented "this could be a massive pile of shit, hey..." it was a tense moment. the film had quite a bit to prove...
... and, i was very pleasantly surprised! Hamlet 2 is pretty consistently strong the whole way through. coogan is daft without being annoying, and there are some hilarious scenes of his failed-actor-turned-drama-teacher doing some deep and emotional acting. catherine keener, whilst just playing yet another incarnation of the charming, likeable bitch role she seems to play in everything she's in these days still has some great moments, and she's just so awesome it's difficult not to go along for the ride. amy poehler makes the most out of what's essentially a cameo with some snappy one liners and her patented zest ("those Bible-humping protesters can suck a bag of dicks"), and david arquette is endearing as coogan and keener's dumb-ass meathead tenant gary. oh, and elizabeth shue is great as a bitter version of herself who's given up on Hollywood and is working at an IVF clinic.
Hamlet 2 takes the "white teacher offers life-affirming lessons to ghetto kids" cliche and inverts it into a pretty consistently funny un-PC comedy that's both self-aware and engaging. it's not the funniest film i've ever seen, but its a great film to watch with friends if you want something light, but with enough balls to go where it needs to in order to make you laugh.
thank you Hamlet 2 for totally not being a waste of my time!