Hamlet 2

Hamlet 2 debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where Focus Features bought it for $10 million, one more overpriced snow bunny sure to melt the moment it hits the multiplex. It’s the quintessential Sundancer: disdainful of middle-class Middle America, willfully “edgy” and made by a Hollywood director looking to make his big comeback. In this case, it’s Andrew Fleming, whose underrated Dick reimagined All the President’s Men with Will Ferrell as Bob Woodward but whose most recent films (among them the woeful In-Laws remake) have been released straight to Dollar Generals. Even better, it’s a film about making capital-A art for folks who just don’t get it — in this instance, a Tucson, Arizona, high school, where Steve Coogan’s Dana Marschz is a drama instructor trying to stage a Hamlet sequel involving a time machine, Jesus Christ, a gay men’s chorus and a song containing the lyric raped in the face. The movie comes with its own self-defense mechanism: If you don’t think it’s funny, you just don’t get it, man. Fine with me.