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The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 28, 2008

Updated:

HAMLET 2 **

The play's the thing in "Hamlet" and it is in "Hamlet 2," as well. It's just about the only thing that makes this intentionally cringe-inducing theatrical parody worth watching.

Sure, Steve Coogan has his hilarious moments as a delusional drama coach struggling to save the arts program at a Tucson, Ariz., high school, but that's all there is in the movie: moments. By now we know the British comic is capable of grabbing hold of a character and never letting go (see: Alan Partridge), so his commitment to playing the arrogant-but-pathetic former actor Dana Marschz is without question.

But the material director Andrew Fleming ("Dick") and co-writer Pam Brady ("Team America: World Police") give him is hit-and-miss, at best. A lot of it was probably funnier in the conceptual stage than in the actual execution.

Before teaching high school drama, though, Dana had a fledgling acting career, the highlights of which we see at the film's promising start. Now, he likes directing his young actors in stage versions of his favorite movies, such as "Dangerous Minds," "Dead Poets Society" and "Mr. Holland's Opus." And his dream is to put on a musical of "The Lake House," that Keanu Reeves-Sandra Bullock romance from a few years back.

These are funny ideas. In between, these concepts, though, is a great morass of redundant, one-note slog, which we must endure while we wait for Dana's wild, wonderfully campy production, "Hamlet 2." It's a musical he hopes will revive not just the school's drama program but his life.

Suffice it to say, "Hamlet 2" features a time machine to circumvent the pesky fact that everyone dies in "Hamlet," the Tucson Gay Men's Chorus and Dana himself - in a wife-beater tank top, jeans, long hair and a beard - dancing to a jaunty, 1950s-style ditty titled "Rock Me Sexy Jesus."

If you feel inclined to get worked up into your own tizzy about that, don't bother. The movie isn't worth it.

92 minutes; R (profanity, sexual references, brief nudity and some drug content)

AMERICAN TEEN ***

The documentary "American Teen" doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know about high school.

It can be a rough time, even if you're pretty and popular. Kids divide themselves into cliques. They can be cruel to each other.

But the intimate way in which director Nanette Burstein tracks the lives of a group of seniors in small-town Indiana brings this familiar story to life, and it should make viewers feel nostalgic, regardless of how long it's been since they walked those crowded, chaotic halls.

Burstein follows several familiar types at Warsaw Community High School in the year before they head off to college: a bossy blonde who runs the school; a basketball star hoping for a college scholarship; a lonely band geek who longs for a girlfriend; a heartthrob who falls for a girl outside the popular crowd.

If this sounds like a John Hughes movie you've seen a million times before, you're right. The poster for "American Teen" even features the five young stars arranged in the same pose as the actors from "The Breakfast Club," which is probably too cute for its own good.

They're all so engaging, though, it's hard not to get drawn into their daily dramas. And except for some obvious staging, their ups and downs, doubts and dreams, all feel vividly real. Well, at least more real than anything you see on "The Hills."

101 minutes; PG-13 (profanity, sexual material, some drinking and smoking)

Christy Lemire

The Associated Press

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