New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Paul Simon’s “Crazy Love (Vol. II)”, off of Graceland, is a tune that sounds perfect for this column, although I believe the joke is in the title and there is no Vol. I. Unlike with “All Her Favorite Fruit,” I can not recall the specifics of when this song crossed over from being simply track 10 to making such a lasting and continued impact on me. Considering the themes of the song, it is likely this was another post-divorce pick-up. I enjoy the give-and-take between the light as air bounciness of the rhythm and the melancholy absurdity of the lyrics. The pain of love severed is served up for the public as Film at 11 and the narrator has to console himself with believing that he will have the last laugh on his former lover.

And the fact that Simon and Linda Ronstadt name-check Tucson, AZ in their duet “Under African Skies” serves as a perfect segue way to Hamlet 2, since that locale is precisely where failed actor Dana Marschz (played by Steve Coogan) finds himself as a woefully non-inspirational high school drama teacher, second-rate husband, and would-be playwright. Soon to be drummed out of his teaching gig due to budget cuts, he attempts to get the funds to save the program by penning and staging a sequel to Shakespeare’s classic tale of a melancholy prince unable to rouse himself to take vengeance for his father’s murder. Hamlet’s inaction in part kicks off a spiral of madness and suicide and death that claims most of the major and minor characters of the proceedings.

How then does one create a sequel when most everyone is dead? Well, Dana adds a time machine. And Jesus Christ. Controversy (and wackiness) ensues. The result could be seen as a forerunner of this television season’s breakout hit Glee, only with a lot less singing and dancing (although the songs in the final quarter of Hamlet 2 help elevate the film considerably.) Who is responsible for all this madness?

Writer/director Andrew Fleming is one of the most unsung of contemporary American filmmakers. He has directed seven features and several television movies and episodes over a 25 year career, yet has never had either a break-out hit (despite having at least one film open at number one at the box office) nor a film that has become a cult favorite in retrospect. He has worked in diverse genres from horror (Bad Dreams) to romantic comedy (Threesome), and supernatural (The Craft) to historical stoner (Dick).

He writes or co-writes all his screenplays and they are generally original material (with the exception of his take on Nancy Drew) and he has only worked as a director for hire once, on the 2003 remake of The In-Laws. I consider Fleming unsung because he has yet to make an out-and-out stinker, has helmed a minor masterpiece with Dick, and seems unafraid to bring his style and point-of-view to a wide variety of material, taking a chance that the results might not be copacetic. And what is this style?

Well, it might best be considered earnest satirical. All his films poke fun at the situations his characters wind up in, but they all take those characters seriously and give them their dues in the end. Fleming is determinedly non-cynical in his creative outlook and appears to have no interest in ever jumping on the Hollywood trend of the moment, which would explain his perpetually low grosses. Let’s consider those briefly.

Continued:       1       2       3