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Coogan looks like some long-lost member of the early Beatles who, with a loosening of a screw or two, could easily turn into Sweeney Todd. Over the years, he's played his share of egomaniacs, most recently, in “Tropic Thunder,” but he has never done egomaniacal failure with the sheer, fearless, squirm-inducing gusto he brings to “Hamlet 2.”

Coogan plays Dana Marschz, a brutally untalented actor who has become a self-loathing high school drama teacher in Tucson, Arizona. Despised by his wife, played by Catherine Keener at her most scalding, he's also a walking punch line to everyone at school. When it's announced that the drama department will be permanently axed, he decides to fight the move by mounting one last, singular production, writing and staging a rock-musical sequel to “Hamlet.”

The brain-bogglingly terrible show features Shakespeare's characters returning to life through a time machine, not to mention Jesus, “Star Wars,” the Gay Men's Chorus of Tucson, and Dana's lifelong conflict with his own father.

As a movie, “Hamlet 2” is daft, lively, and very, very scrappy – a knockoff of Waiting for Guffman that blends that Christopher Guest classic with a satire of inspirational-teacher movies, then throws in a tweak of conservative values.

The movie keeps slipping and sliding around, yet as a pedestal for Coogan, it is often dementedly hilarious. Though the show inspires a local controversy, when “Hamlet 2” finally goes up, songs like "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" give off such a happy blast of cluelessness that it becomes almost innocent. It's a high school musical that would make John Waters proud.