Word: hamlet
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There's nothing remarkable, or witty, or particularly engaging about Hamlet 2, a ragged comedy about a failed actor who tries to mount a science-fiction musical sequel to Shakespeare's tragedy in a Tucson, Ariz., high school. But at the movie's damp little heart there is a poignant truth: all actors' desperate neediness to win the appreciation and approval of the audience, which is anyone they meet. All of life is a war for that attention, in which the armaments are charm, beauty and menace, the battle cry is "Look at me!" and the secret weapon...
...mechanics of Dana's despair and salvation are managed with no special grace by writers Andrew Fleming and Pam Brady, and haphazardly directed by Fleming. He's done wan remakes of The In-laws and Nancy Drew, but the film closest to Hamlet 2 was the 1999 comedy Dick, which enlisted a slew of Saturday Night Live veterans (Will Ferrell, Harry Shearer, Ana Gasteyer, Jim Breuer) in the fanciful tale of two girls (Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) who wander off from a White House tour and get entangled with President Nixon. That one sounded funnier than...
...early reviews of Hamlet 2 make it seem like a wild anarchic satire. It is nothing of the sort. It's a standard-issue parody of the inspirational-teacher movies that bloomed in the '90s (with Mr. Holland's Opus and Dangerous Minds) and show no signs of going away. Satire's aim is to cleanse by annihilating; that's what Dr. Strangelove and other black comedies of the '60s did. But genuine satire is hard to find on the big screen these days, or any day, because its strident moralist tone tends to alienate audiences. In the definition...
...spur to getting a movie financed, so would-be satires cop out by the final reel and become the thing they started to mock. Tropic Thunder devolves from a Hollywood diatribe, in which all the participants are greedy or loony, into Rambo VII or a peppier Platoon. And Hamlet 2 turns into an MGM musical with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, where the kids put on the big show in a barn - here, a warehouse. Instead of scorched-earth satire, this is parody plain and simple, especially simple. It has no greater intent than to tease and cuddle...
...their bite or bitter their first taste, they're afraid to let the moviegoer leave with a dark thought in his mind; they require happy endings. That's one reason the typical modern movie is no more advanced than the sentimental antiques of Hollywood's Golden Age - and why Hamlet 2 is as needy as its hero - because it wants not to be probing or profound or even witty but, above all else, to be loved...