| | | From the Producers of Little Miss Sunshine.
Features: DVD, English, Spanish, French, Dolby, Dolby Digital (5.1)
When his school's theater department is threatened to be cut, failed actor-turned-high school drama teacher Dana Marschz writes a play that he hopes will solve everything: a sequel to Shakespeare's Hamlet.Now, staging one of the most politically incorrect musical-theater extravaganzas ever seen, Dana and his class will put it all on the line for one controversial, conflicted night of hilarity!
"Scathingly funny!" Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair
"Dementedly hilarious!" Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"Amy Poehler's a riot! Catherine Keener is perfection." Pete Hammond, Hollywood.com
"Comedy heaven!" Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"...pleasantly odd and truly funny, and it builds in strength as it goes along." Shawn Levy, Portland Oregonian
Editor's Note
Much like the inspired protagonists of his two favorite movies, DEAD POETS SOCIETY and MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS, high school drama teacher Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) is going to save the arts. Marschz's first obstacle: Shakespeare killed off all the major characters when he wrote Hamlet, which puts a damper on his plans for a musical sequel. Luckily, Marschz has an ingenious literary device to circumvent that last doozy: a time machine built in woodshop that will catapult Hamlet and his new pal, Jesus Christ, into the present day and back again just in time to save Gertrude, Laertes, and the gang. This brilliant piece of theatre is born in the mind of Marschz upon the announcement of the drama club's impending cancellation, prompting the failed actor to take the advice of a ruthless freshman drama critic and finally write something that isn't an adaptation of ERIN BROCKOVICH. But when authorities try to have the production banned because of its offensive material, it's going to take the inspiration of actress-turned-local-nurse Elisabeth Shue (playing herself), the will of Marschz's young students, and the wiles of a feisty lawyer (Amy Poehler) to get Hamlet 2 in front of an audience. HAMLET 2, the movie, is singular in its melding of grotesque theatre spoofing, schadenfreude, and complete subversion of the underdog-defiance genre's familiar trajectory. Rarely has a film hit conventional plot points only to take the wind out of their sails so effectively while nevertheless moving toward a destination not entirely unlike where its mainstream counterparts would go anyway. HAMLET 2's subdued lack of traditional filmic values and glaring music cues, as well as its performances, which manage to fold earnestness and deadpan into one another, amount to a movie that simultaneously deconstructs, skewers, and affirms. Like any good satire, it is what it's lampooning.
| Features | Audio Commentary With Director/Co-Writer Andrew Fleming & Co-Writer Pam Brady | | Audio: English, French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Deleted Scenes | | Dubbed: French | | Featurette: Making Number 2 & Oscar Winner Vs. High School Drama Class | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Sing Along With Hamlet 2 | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | Hamlet 2 - DVD Review By: Chris Cabin - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 12/12/2008 4:33 PM | |
Andrew Fleming's Hamlet 2, a hot potato at this year's Sundance Film Festival which was purchased by Focus Features, takes nothing seriously and that should be taken both literally and pervasively. The humor has an illimitable ardor for defecating on political correctness but it has a similar indifference toward any sort of continuity in filmmaking, storytelling, or style. Written by Fleming and Pam Brady, the film brandishes the sort of overtly offensive, partisan political taunting gags and guffaws that one might find on Comedy Central's South Park, the show Ms. Brady writes for regularly....read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Universal |
| Release Date: 4/14/2009 |
| Running Time: 92 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2008 | | Catalog ID: 62104640 | | UPC: 00025195038201 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew | Steve Coogan | | Elisabeth Shue | | Melonie Diaz | | Catherine Keener | | Amy Poehler | | David Arquette | | Andrew Fleming - Executive Producer | | Pam Brady - Screenwriter | | Alexander Gruszynski - Director of Photography | | Ron Yerxa - Executive Producer | | Michael Flynn - Executive Producer | | Pam Brady - Executive Producer | | Albert Berger - Executive Producer | | Aaron Ryder - Producer | | Ralph Sall - Executive Music Producer | | Leonid Rozhetskin - Producer | | Eric Eisner - Producer | | Ralph Sall - Composer | | Andrew Fleming - Screenwriter | | Andrew Fleming - Director |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "It's Coogan's break-through star performance that holds it all together. He's sensational." 08/21/2008 p.92Box Office
"[Featuring] Coogan's unbelievably adept performance as Dana -- a sustained tour de force of comic acting comparable to the late, great Peter Sellers at his absolute best." 08/01/2008 p.38-39 Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "Steve Coogan plays Marschz with breathless gusto....It's Steve Coogan's vehicle...and one he rides all the way home." 03/01/2009 ReelViews 7 of 10
Hamlet 2 (a great title) does not represent the first time in recent years that something unconventional has been done to one of the Bard's classics. (Although, to be sure, no one has been as audacious as to develop a musical sequel to a play.) Scotland, PA re-imagined Macbeth as a modern-day comedy. In A Midwinter's Tale, Kenneth Branagh developed a comedy centered on an amateur production of Hamlet. Years later, Branagh elected to adapt Love's Labour's Lost as a musical, using established standards. Aspects of all these productions can be found in Hamlet 2, not to mention swatches of Mel Brooks' The Producers and Christopher Guest's Waiting for Guffman. Despite the richness of the premise for comic invention, however, Hamlet 2 remains a rather mediocre experience, offering sporadic laughs but never achieving the level of consistent humor necessary to make this memorable...The best things about Hamlet 2 are the most offbeat. Those who sense the occasional flavor of South Park are not deceived: director Andrew Fleming's co-writer, Pam Brady, is a South Park alum. The move opens with parodies of TV commercials illustrating Dana's lack of success as an actor. There's a short but funny scene where he interacts with a cat while straining to write Hamlet 2. A montage is set to a rendition of "Maniac" as performed by the Tucson Gay Chorus (they later also sing "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"). Moments like these save Hamlet 2 from becoming a bore but they don't make it worth paying a full admission for. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
"Hamlet 2" stars the British comedian Steve Coogan, who with this film and the current "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, passionately, more than slightly mad drama teacher...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 television legend in the U.K., but not so uber-Brit that he doesn't travel well. He seems somewhat at home in Tucson, which, let it be said, has to be a nicer town than anybody in this movie thinks it is. - Roger Ebert
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