Steve Coogan portrays Dana Marschz. Dana is a failed actor-turned-high school drama teacher. Shortchanged in the talent department, Dana still harbors ambitions and passions. At work, that is; his personal life, with his dissatisfied wife Brie (Keener) and their boarder Gary (Arquette), leaves much to be desired. At Tucson, AZ's West Mesa High School, Dana sees himself as an inspirational teacher. After much perspiration, he conceives a sequel to Shakespeare's "Hamlet" – a musical-theater extravaganza that will disdain both political correctness and dramatic credibility. Rallying and rousing his class, Dana casts a wider net by recruiting transfer students for key roles. With rehearsals underway, objections from school officials and the community are soon raised, but Dana will not be denied his freedom of artistic expression. Dana gets unexpected support from ACLU attorney Cricket Feldstein (Poehler) and his favorite actress, Elisabeth Shue. Above all else, he fervently believes that his opus must be staged, and nothing can break his optimistic spirit.
Now is the time of year where it is soooooooooooooooo quiet at the movie theater that you start going insane if you don't find something to do. So what I've decided to do is give those movies that not even I would bother seeing in theaters a twenty minute window to capture my attention enough to make me want to bother renting this movie to see the rest of it in a couple of months. This was my initial test and it failed miserably. I was sitting there twenty minutes in to the movie having not the slightest clue why this movie was ever made. So, I threw in the towel and started finding other things to do when I remembered that I was told to specifically watch the musical at the end. So, I went and watched the last 1/2 hour of the movie and to be completely honest - that part was actually pretty funny. It was so over the top that you had no choice but to laugh at it. This also coincided with when Amy Poehler showed up in the movie. She is as funny as she always is and helped the movie end well. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is pretty much crapola.
I wouldn't really recommend this movie to anyone. The musical finale is really funny, but there's no reason to pay and watch the rest of the movie just to get there. This is totally a wait for cable movie.
