High school drama teacher Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan, centre) rallies his students to stage a controversial sequel to Shakespeare's tragedy in Hamlet 2. (Cathy Kanavy/Focus Features/Associated Press)

In Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005), Steve Coogan played the lead actor in an impossible project: an attempt to make a movie out of Laurence Sterne’s unfilmable 18th-century novel Tristram Shandy. Hamlet 2 finds Coogan as a man tackling an even more daunting endeavour: a sequel to Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy — you know, the one where all the main characters die at the end.

That’s no impediment to Dana Marschz (Coogan), the “cuckoo bananas” drama teacher in this scattershot high school satire. Dana has always thought the original play was “such a downer,” but he's certain his self-penned follow-up will remedy that. Without spoiling its daft plot, let’s just say that Dana’s sequel involves a time machine. And a sexy, rock ‘n’ roll Jesus. And a gay men’s chorus singing Elton John’s Someone Saved My Life Tonight.

The show may sound preposterous, but poor Dana has nothing to lose. A failed actor (his sad resumé includes playing stand-in to Robin Williams on Patch Adams and doing commercials for herpes medicine), Dana has been reduced to teaching drama at a cash-strapped high school in Tucson, Ariz., where he has to conduct his classes in the cafeteria. His student productions are equally bereft of money and imagination. They consist of skeletal stagings of Hollywood blockbusters like Erin Brockovich, invariably starring the school’s only two drama geeks, the sexually confused Rand (Skylar Astin) and a squeaky-clean Christian girl named Epiphany (Phoebe Strole).

Dana (Steve Coogan) gets help from ACLU lawyer Cricket Feldstein (Amy Poehler) in Hamlet 2. (Focus Features/Associated Press) But after the school enacts some program cuts, a flood of students with no other options pour into drama class. Suddenly faced with a room full of surly Hispanic kids, Dana eagerly switches into inspirational teacher mode, à la Dead Poets Society, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Dangerous Minds. (Coogan’s character helpfully ticks off the movies that Hamlet 2 sets out to spoof, in case we don’t get the joke.) Dana himself is a parody of the unorthodox pedagogue, a cheerful, long-haired ninny who gets around on roller skates and wears kaftans, sans underwear, to increase his sperm count. (His long-suffering wife, played by the inimitable Catherine Keener, wants them to have a baby.)

Miraculously, Dana manages to win over his unruly pupils and get them excited about his mad plan to do the Bard one better. At first, it’s his chance to prove himself and perhaps finally please his toughest critic, a snotty little junior (Shea Pepe) who pens acerbic notices for the school paper. But after the hard-nosed principal (Marshall Bell) decides to axe drama – and Dana’s job as well – the irreverent Hamlet sequel becomes even more significant. The students refuse to let their teacher’s dream die and, defying the school authorities, set out to stage the play anyway. In the process, the production becomes a symbolic blow against budget cuts and censorship that catches the attention of everyone from the New York Times to the ACLU.

That brings us to the play-within-the-film, at which point Hamlet 2 turns into a send-up of amateur theatrics that recalls Christopher Guest’s am-dram mockumentary Waiting for Guffman. Only Dana’s vision is wilder and sexier than anything Corky St. Clair, Guest’s small-town drama queen, could have imagined. His Hamlet redux incorporates not just Jesus and that time machine, but Einstein, Satan, light-sabre duels and musical nods to Rent and Grease. It provides the movie with a spectacularly silly climax that looks like something concocted by Family Guy’s Peter Griffin or by one of those dysfunctional teachers from South Park.

In fact, there’s a strong flavour of South Park throughout the picture (note the appearance of those SP faves, Jesus and Satan), which should come as no surprise. Hamlet 2’s script is by Pam Brady, a co-writer on that biting animated series and its two film spinoffs. The director is Andrew Fleming, whose credits include last year’s innocuous Nancy Drew but also the raucous 1999 Watergate comedy Dick.

Dana (Steve Coogan, left), as a sexy Jesus, performs Hamlet 2 with his students. (Cathy Kanavy/Focus Features/Associated Press)Add to their satiric sensibilities those of Coogan, a comedian still better known in his native Britain for playing obnoxious broadcaster Alan Partridge. Hamlet 2, a hit at Sundance, could be his North American breakthrough. At the very least, it provides him with an ample showcase for his comic specialty: the grinningly fatuous twit. His Dana Marschz, a struggling ex-alcoholic with a bad marriage, would be unbearably pathetic if he wasn’t such a gleeful idiot. Looking like a cross between Eric Idle and Tiny Tim, he flashes his toothy smile and listens, starry-eyed, to a cautionary spiel by bitter actress Elisabeth Shue, not hearing a word she’s saying. Creative despite his lack of talent, he carries a portable keyboard around so he can express himself in tuneless song, usually in public places (like a fertility clinic).

It’s a funny performance, if occasionally stretched thin. Covering some of the weak spots is a sterling supporting cast that includes Keener, Shue, David Arquette and Amy Poehler. Indie goddess Keener is amusing as always, even if she’s just doing a rehash of the sardonic Maxine from Being John Malkovich. Poehler is better, turning in a hilarious cameo as a feisty little ACLU lawyer. Shue, playing herself, serves up a slice of amiable self-parody. The kids are good, too – my favourite is Pepe’s pint-sized critic, who quotes Roland Barthes in his reviews.

The film unfolds in five acts, just like Hamlet, and boasts a few other drama in-jokes. But theatre fans will find it a less satisfying backstage comedy than the witty Guffman or TV’s Slings and Arrows. On the other hand, Hamlet 2 may be just the antidote we needed to Disney’s sugary High School Musical franchise. As Shakespeare's Hamlet might have put it, ‘tis a caustic comedy devoutly to be wish’d.

Hamlet 2 opens Aug. 22.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.