Hamlet 2: To laugh or not to laugh

Tropic Thunder could learn a lot from Hamlet 2: how to offend with good intentions, how to make an actor's insecurities relatable to anyone, and how to make viewers feel guilty and smart for laughing.

If you haven't heard, Hamlet 2 is the title of a play written by a supremely failed actor (Steve Coogan, whose appeal is finally understandable) while teaching high school drama. As if turning the stage's greatest tragedy into a happy-go-lucky musical isn't outrageous enough, the songs include a bouncy number titled Rock Me, Sexy Jesus.

So, you may wonder, how can Persall chastise Tropic Thunder for being too "inside" about actors' egos, jump on Ben Stiller for his use of the word "retard," then endorse Hamlet 2 with its thespian hero and sacrilegious content?

It's easy as 1-2-3.

1. Community stage actors are funnier than Hollywood superstars. From Chaplin to Coogan, viewers laugh louder at characters with more down-to-earth problems than a movie going over budget or not having an Oscar on the shelf. There's a dreamer aspect to Hamlet 2, Waiting for Guffman or any community theater group that touches the dreamer in all of us. We aren't laughing at them; we're laughing with their tilts against windmills, applying their example to our own flails against fate.

2. Characters are funnier than caricatures. Everything we'd ever know about Tropic Thunder's actor heroes was learned in the first 10 minutes, with bogus trailers for their Hollywood schlock and tabloid TV reports defining them. Thanks to Coogan's unerringly comical performance, the actor-hero of Hamlet 2 follows a compelling arc that begins low, plunges lower then zooms someplace around medium contentment.  "My life is a parody of a tragedy," he moans. Within that single line is the complexity and intelligence marking Hamlet 2, even at its crassest, lowbrow moments.

3. Maybe Jesus would be sexy if he returned today. He'd need to be in order to compete for attention with everything tempting mankind. Taken in context, and actually heard, Rock Me, Sexy Jesus isn't far removed from the prayer-rockers Disney World annually invites in concert. More risque, as you'd expect from a movie co-written by South Park's unsung hero Pam Stone, but with that show's brand of offensiveness with deep meaning and cockeyed reverence. You'd have to see Hamlet 2 to understand. Protesters won't, and that part of the movie's message. Trust me, it's much fairer to Christians than Tropic Thunder was to mentally challenged people. 

Comments

[paul]

And a former Tampa resident, Arnie Pantoja, has a big part in the film as Vitamin J.