Chapter Two: Hamlet 2
By Brett Beach
May 6, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
So here it is, May 2010, and this week marks the one-year anniversary of Chapter Two. You have resting in your hot little hands - um, metaphorically speaking - the 38th installment of an ever-evolving attempt to define that nebulous area where a movie might have given birth to a franchise, or it might simply have delivered a second installment. On the off chance there is any applause out there on the other side of the monitor, rest assured I will be here taking bows all week.
In an effort to better coordinate my meanderings with current articles on our home page, allow me these brief digressions. Kim Hollis’ take on American Graffiti reminds me that I must needs check out More American Graffiti at some point.
The hidden message to be found on the Death Hunt poster offers me an opportunity to suggest a Lee Marvin film: the 1972 weirdly humorous gangster pic Prime Cut, co-starring Gene Hackman and Sissy Spacek, in her film debut and fully in the flesh. It’s an odd duck, tonally speaking, at once over-the-top-and-back camp and rough-and-tough character study. If it had been inspired by a comic book or graphic novel, I might know what to make of it. As it stands, the action is crisp, the set pieces are vivid and director Michael Ritchie offers up a gorgeously harrowing chase through a field of wheat that climaxes with the best non-transportational use of a limousine in the history of cinema (give or take.)
And as for Top Chef…well, actually, I have nothing insightful to offer in that arena.
To circle back briefly to the extensive musical notations (pun intended) in last week’s column - and this will be relevant as Hamlet 2 (the play within the movie) is a musical - not every artist is a lock waiting to be picked but sometimes particular songs are. To wit, two of my most beloved songs of all time are from albums that I loved from the moment I first heard them but these particular songs were not favorites.
“All Her Favorite Fruit” by Camper Van Beethoven off their 1990 album Key Lime Pie had never really moved me from the start the way “Sweethearts” or “I Was Born in a Laundromat” did. I believe the precise moment that I fell in love with it came while hearing it over the loudspeakers at a downtown Portland electronics store circa 2003 where I was selling back my two Atari 2600 game systems and about two dozen or so games. It took me a moment or two to recognize it - I may even have had to look up the lyrics on-line when I got home - but the melancholy seemed appropriate and it felt symbolic of…something. I still qualified at this time as freshly divorced so perhaps this added to the mix, but now I simply love to think about David Lowry’s oblique lyrics, close my eyes to the sway of Don Lax’ violin-playing and imagine a really good game of croquet.
Paul Simon’s “Crazy Love (Vol. II)”, off of Graceland, is a tune that sounds perfect for this column, although I believe the joke is in the title and there is no Vol. I. Unlike with “All Her Favorite Fruit,” I can not recall the specifics of when this song crossed over from being simply track 10 to making such a lasting and continued impact on me. Considering the themes of the song, it is likely this was another post-divorce pick-up. I enjoy the give-and-take between the light as air bounciness of the rhythm and the melancholy absurdity of the lyrics. The pain of love severed is served up for the public as Film at 11 and the narrator has to console himself with believing that he will have the last laugh on his former lover.
And the fact that Simon and Linda Ronstadt name-check Tucson, AZ in their duet “Under African Skies” serves as a perfect segue way to Hamlet 2, since that locale is precisely where failed actor Dana Marschz (played by Steve Coogan) finds himself as a woefully non-inspirational high school drama teacher, second-rate husband, and would-be playwright. Soon to be drummed out of his teaching gig due to budget cuts, he attempts to get the funds to save the program by penning and staging a sequel to Shakespeare’s classic tale of a melancholy prince unable to rouse himself to take vengeance for his father’s murder. Hamlet’s inaction in part kicks off a spiral of madness and suicide and death that claims most of the major and minor characters of the proceedings.
How then does one create a sequel when most everyone is dead? Well, Dana adds a time machine. And Jesus Christ. Controversy (and wackiness) ensues. The result could be seen as a forerunner of this television season’s breakout hit Glee, only with a lot less singing and dancing (although the songs in the final quarter of Hamlet 2 help elevate the film considerably.) Who is responsible for all this madness?
Writer/director Andrew Fleming is one of the most unsung of contemporary American filmmakers. He has directed seven features and several television movies and episodes over a 25 year career, yet has never had either a break-out hit (despite having at least one film open at number one at the box office) nor a film that has become a cult favorite in retrospect. He has worked in diverse genres from horror (Bad Dreams) to romantic comedy (Threesome), and supernatural (The Craft) to historical stoner (Dick).
He writes or co-writes all his screenplays and they are generally original material (with the exception of his take on Nancy Drew) and he has only worked as a director for hire once, on the 2003 remake of The In-Laws. I consider Fleming unsung because he has yet to make an out-and-out stinker, has helmed a minor masterpiece with Dick, and seems unafraid to bring his style and point-of-view to a wide variety of material, taking a chance that the results might not be copacetic. And what is this style?
Well, it might best be considered earnest satirical. All his films poke fun at the situations his characters wind up in, but they all take those characters seriously and give them their dues in the end. Fleming is determinedly non-cynical in his creative outlook and appears to have no interest in ever jumping on the Hollywood trend of the moment, which would explain his perpetually low grosses. Let’s consider those briefly.
Nancy Drew, with just a smidge over $25 million, is his biggest moneymaker in unadjusted dollars. Before Hamlet 2, his lowest grosser was Dick with $6 million. Rights to Hamlet 2 were purchased at the 2008 Sundance Festival for a near-record $10 million but when the film went wide in late August of that year, it struggled to get to $5 million (against a budget of $9 million). I am always shocked when big money is paid for little films that probably won’t get all that much audience attention (in this case, the hope was there that this could be the next Little Miss Sunshine), but in the case of Hamlet 2, I can see both sides of the fence. The studio was counting on the raunch generating some controversy and making it a must-see, and then letting good word-of-mouth on the film’s quality do the rest. Unfortunately, neither scenario took hold.
Fleming’s co-writer on the screenplay and many of the songs was Pam Brady, who works on South Park and has been involved in various capacities from writing to producing over its long run. She also co-wrote Bigger Longer & Uncut and Team America: World Police and many of the musical numbers therein. I wouldn’t have pegged her to be a good fit with Fleming and Hamlet 2 emerges as one of his weaker efforts if only because it seems like there is a hella raunchier, more offensive film, squirming to get out from the midst of Fleming’s kinder, gentler, though still barbed, satire.
A similar vein was evident on Nancy Drew. That feature admirably strove to be both true to Carolyn Keene’s creation and be a family-friendly outing, while finding the potential for satire and ironic humor hidden just beneath the surface. It was entertaining but never really found its groove. I think a better recent reimagining of the heroine was Chelsea Cain’s delightful comic novel Confessions of a Teen Sleuth. I would have loved to see Fleming tackle that, although its commercial potential would have been even more lackluster.
Hamlet 2 is both an open send-up of the inspirational teacher genre and, at heart, another tale of a teacher who winds up being an inspiration against all odds and quite by accident. Coogan shares with fellow Brit Ricky Gervais the ability and delight in playing potentially unlikable characters and finding something for an audience to like about them. Coogan isn’t quite at his best here, though (see 24 Hour Party People or Tristram Shandy for that), and I think the reason is that Marschz isn’t a fully realized character. He’s a little bit pratfall, a little bit funny, and a lot pathetic, but this never seems to coalesce into a comic creation. Ditto for the play Dana is writing. We gather hints of how awful and deranged it is, but most of this remains unseen in the end (which may be for the best.)
Among the other players, Catherine Keener as Dana’s wife Brie and David Arquette as a boarder that the couple have taken in to make ends meet, both underwhelm for quite different reasons. Keener is playing a spin on her “usual” brittle characterization but Brie alternates between abusive and soft quite schizophrenically. Arquette’s role is near silent and passive which is amusing given his capacity to steal a scene with his energy and volume. It’s good casting against type, but Arquette never gets a chance to make much of an impression.
And then, there is Elisabeth Shue playing…“herself.” This conceit may have become overworked in the decade since Being John Malkovich, but Shue is remarkably note-perfect. She doesn’t have the luxury of shock value (see Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar series) and she isn’t entirely integral to the film’s plot, but she is sunny and unflappable and her reaction shots in the audience as the play unfolds get some of the film’s biggest laughs.
As for that ending, well Hamlet 2 (the play) is the best part of Hamlet 2 (the film). The showstopper, “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus” is a Grease-esque 1950s-style rock n roll parody and is a success not simply because it is funny and borderline offensive, but because the song is catchy and instantly hummable. Coogan with a wife-beater tee and shoulder-length hair strikes the right messianic pose. This is followed by a spirited and uplifting rendition of Elton John’s anthemic “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” performed in the film by the cast and The Gay Men’s Choir of Tucson but credited on the soundtrack to The Ralph Sall Experience. Taken together, these two numbers perfectly illustrate satire (the former) and earnestness (the latter). I am not sure that they fit together well here, but both songs help lift the film out of its doldrums.
And how does Hamlet 2 stack up as a creation? Well, considering that Dana writes it as a healing tool against the father who never supported his performing arts dream, it makes sense that Hamlet and JC - two figures with “father issues” if there ever were any - would team up to help each other out. After all, what’s a few centuries between new friends when you have a time machine?