Current mood:	amused
Entry tags:	cinema, movie biz

HAMLET2 - A Movie Review
The Steve Coogan movie, HAMLET2, is indeed charming and funny. Here in Austin, you can only see it at 12:40 p.m. at the Arbor Movie Theater (and at the S.Alamo only 2x a day). So... limited release, which is too bad. It got a bidding war going for it at Sundance, I read. It's obviously an indie movie, but full of clever business.

Steve Coogan, who's made a good liviing in England creating fatuous or geeky characters, creates an American acting goober reduced to teaching drama in Tuscon to high schoolers. One of those clueless guys all gushing and positive thinking and dimly perceiving the outside world. And he plays the heck out of it! With his skating to/from work in his corduroy pants and professor's jacket (and then later, due to a plot device, he begins wearing outrageous togs that get funnier and funnier), and his refusal to acknowledge that he's a Loser even when he only has two devoted students.

What was cool was that the play he writes and the kids put on, Hamlet2, is both goony and entertaining. Plus it gets oddly emotionally affecting. They wisely don't show you much of it at all until the climax. Sometimes the humor and weirdness get a little too weird, but hold in there. The play's the thing! It definitely pays off!