Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

markandkarenfitz My son is a college level theatre student. His sister and he have been in musical theatre for years, growing up.I am a theatre parent.So he and I went to this with high expectations. First showing, on a Saturday afternoon. Only he and I in the theatre. We made it to about half-way and left.We each feared the other was enjoying it; though I don't know why, as neither of us laughed once.Maybe I don't like Steve Coogan. I could have sworn, by his delivery and the dialogue, that he must have written and directed this film as a vehicle for his own glorification. Nothing was probable or representative of real theatre.There was no correlation of anything in this movie to its real life doppelganger. We had to look at his butt twice! God Almighty, please don't let this be the end of Elizabeth Schue.Roger Ebert gave this crap a favorable review but on re-reading his review, it seems to me he very skillfully and with, plausible deniability threw some friend a bone.

gavin6942 A high school teacher wants to rejuvenate his drama class after years of being trashed, and now threatened with getting shut down. Well, he ends up getting more than shut down when the principal gets word of what's in his play -- crude sexual situations and blasphemy. But the students press on and decide they'll do it themselves.This film is great if you love racial humor, Christian humor, fertility humor, and all sorts of questionable tastes. We have some fine moments from Elisabeth Shue (playing a cynical version of herself), a discussion on Amy Poehler's balls, and a small role for David Arquette (which is probably good, as he can overshadow a project).The Latino parents are hilarious... objecting to "Hamlet 2" for the strangest of reasons, and it's nice to see some of the best advice coming from Little Sapirstein, a source of brilliance. An odd twist on the sage role.I love the ceaseless references to "The Lake House", "Erin Brockovich" and other contemporary pieces of rubbish... and the references to "Dead Poets Society" and "Dangerous Minds", which the film clearly draws influence from. Though, sadly, "Dead Poets" is the better film.In the end, the film is funny, but uneven. I enjoyed the off-color humor and the "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" song, but there were many dry parts... sometimes five or ten minutes of boring would go by. Had the pacing been slightly different, or a few more jokes thrown in, I'd call it a success... but it just didn't come out right.

gca28 As someone who would watch Steve Coogan in almost anything and as an English student, I was really looking forward to this. "A comedy about a lousy theatre teacher who puts on a sequel to Hamlet? How could it miss?", I thought. If the film had focused more on the play instead of trying to be a mish-mash of Dangerous Minds, School of Rock and any number of misguided comedies about naive man-children, it would've been fairly awesome. Instead the film tries too hard to be too many things and fails to do any of them well.Firstly, what's up with Coogan's accent? Personally I would've preferred it if he played a British teacher in an American school (if nothing else, it would've made the Shakespeare connection funnier), but instead he puts on an admittedly passable American accent that I found unnecessary and jarring. His performance is fantastic besides that one quibble, although he isn't given much to work with.I fully agree with some of the other commenters when they say that Catherine Keener and David Arquette are pointless here, which is a shame as I love Keener in movies like Living in Oblivion and 40 Year Old Virgin, but she is totally wasted here as a relentless shrew. In fact, apart from the scene where Elizabeth Shue explains her reasons for leaving acting, Coogan's is the only really good performance here, with the supporting cast being mostly indistinguishable.The aspects of the plot to do with the drama class (ie. most of the plot) are especially banal and forced. I would've enjoyed it more if, instead of being landed with a group of "troubled teens" (can we please rest this dusty old cliché for a damn change?), Coogan had a class of students like the two suck-ups he has at the start. Riffing on Dangerous Minds just gives the film a very cheesy edge, when a film about a dedicated drama class putting on a horrible play would be far more entertaining than an awkward attempt at commentary on arts funding in public schools.Speaking of the plot, the main thing that stopped me from enjoying this film was the fact that practically every aspect of the plot seemed half-written. Coogan's students fall into line for no concrete reason other than narrative convenience, there seems to be no reason why his marriage is still somewhat intact and most of the jokes are stilted and unfunny.I tried really hard to like this, but ultimately it just wasn't good enough. A let-down.

Davidon80 There's so much to recommend in this movie, the script is sharp, the jokes are solid, the direction is well paced but most importantly Steve Coogan is finally showing signs of becoming a real comedic character actor as oppose to his own varied persona.The movie is about a failed actor, Dana Marshz, who is in love with the craft of acting, in the classical sense of the method actor. Failing as an actor he turns to teaching, and is equally as bad at this. All the whilst his wife is sleeping with the lodger and he is roller blading to work to save money. Dana is then forced to teach a group of Latinos who have chosen to study drama because their favourite subjects have all been cancelled. Failing to inspire them with his knowledge of acting, he inadvertently gets their attention when drama is cancelled and he decides to take matters into his own hands by saving drama with a production of Hamlet 2 the sequel.This movie could have been an absolute bomb, but what it manages to do is ridicule every genre that we expect it to be. For example we see the ridiculing of the cross cultural genre in the Latinos meets white middle America, we see the teacher take on the school and parents against the odds, we see the teacher inspire the student genre. Everything from Dangerous Minds to Dead Poet's society is turned squarely on it's head and the result is pure hilarity.Steve Coogan does a great job as the superficial do gooder who could never get a break, I've been a fan of Coogan since his Alan Partridge days and always thought he was a true comic. Though his move to the U.S has been hit and miss with movies such 80 days around the world and Alibi not really flexing his true capabilities. It seems that in Hamlet 2 he has found that perfect balance between facial contortion humour and perfectly delivered lines. This is a career high for Coogan and I hope this is the way forward for him as he begins to fill his full potential as a comedian for our time.