I saw Hamlet 2 a few weeks ago. It was very… strange. It really played like a terrible movie which had no right to be funny or even watchable. And yet somehow it was. In fact, I quite liked it, and not in a “so bad it’s good” way, I just actually liked this terrible movie. My girlfriend and I were the only people in the theater. Is it even being marketed? We don’t have cable and, aside from the Straight Dope I have very little internet presence, so I had never heard of this until I saw it was playing at a good time.
Roger Ebert’s review, perhaps characteristically at this point, seems to completely miss the point. Reading this review it sounds like a bog-standard high school movie. He touches briefly on some of the oddness (Amy Poehler as the ACLU lawyer, Jesus has a swimmer’s bod, et cetera) but I thought the oddness was the whole point, and really what made the whole experience worthwhile. Nobody cares about a Brady Bunch “I must have a successful play to save drama” high school melodrama. (Well, except the actual high school drama club students, I guess.) Is the rest of the media so wrongheaded on this? It’s a bit like some alternate universe where Spinal Tap was reviewed as a serious documentary and social commentary on the lives of rock stars.
So am I the only doper who went and saw this? Certainly the Riverside multiplex wasn’t making any money on it. Not only were we the only two people in the theater, we also complained because the sound was crazy loud and the speakers kept buzzing. I almost feel like sending a letter to Steve Coogan and apologizing for making the people who watch his movies seem like whiny crybabies. I know he also made Tropic Thunder, and now I’m starting to think I should check that out, too. If I had seen previews for Hamlet 2 that were as dreadful as for Tropic Thunder, I probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Concerning the movie itself, I thought the Elizabeth Shue thing was great. I turned to my girlfriend and said (no whispering required when you’re alone in a cavernous room with Ms Shue towering thirty feet tall above your head!) “Hey, that’s Elizabeth Shue!” Of course, she responded with “Who? Oh, that girl you keep telling me was in Adventures in Babysitting and Karate Kid, two movies which I have never seen? Very helpful. Yes, I know you met her once. Shhh!” Then Steve Coogan’s character says “Hey, you look just like Elizabeth Shue!” and it turns out she is. Just like in real life. Also, we spent the first half of the movie trying to figure out whether that really was David Arquette. I have this vague feeling that, because he was in Scream, the man used to have a career. I suppose that’s not actually true, though.
Also, did anyone think the movie was anti-Semitic? There was the ACLU lawyer with such gems as “I married a Jew, I’ve got nothing else to lose!” and several other Jewish jokes. I thought at the time that they were all intended in good fun, but I can see how other people wouldn’t. Part of that is that a lot of the humor comes from jokes that aren’t very funny but are played as though they are. It’s a bit like Andy Kaufman getting up and doing anti-comedy.
Also: Rock Me, Sexy Jesus.
(Where’s the happy Jew smiley when you need him?)