Two people are credited with writing "Hamlet 2." Maybe there should have been three.

The two, Pam Brady and director Andrew Fleming, came up with a brilliant idea, or an idea that should have been brilliant. But although their film has many funny parts, much of it comes up short. A third writer might have upped the comic batting average.

Working in the tradition of "Waiting for Guffman" and "The Producers," Brady and Fleming have imagined a less-than-talented high school drama teacher who wants to produce an ambitious show. Steve Coogan stars as failed actor Dana Marschz, who now teaches at West Mesa High School in Tucson, Ariz. (which was filmed at West Mesa High School in Albuquerque, N.M.).

The school's theater has been turned into a "snackatorium," the class is full of students whose other electives were canceled, and the school board is eliminating funding for the drama program. Although the reasons for his decision are never clearly articulated, Marschz decides he must produce a hit play.

But Marschz is a terrible writer, and the best he can come up with is a musical sequel to "Hamlet."

Here is where the film should kick into high gear especially because, as Marschz's wife (Catherine Keener) notes, everyone has died by the end of "Hamlet." The filmmakers need to hit it out of the park with "Hamlet 2," as "Springtime for Hitler" did for "The Producers," But they get bogged down in depicting Jesus as a rock star and manage only a solid single up the middle.

What's Jesus doing in "Hamlet," you ask? That's part of what the filmmakers mistakenly consider the big joke. This "Hamlet" has everything in it from Albert Einstein to "Star Wars" to Snoopy. What it doesn't have is "Hamlet," though Hamlet reviving Ophelia with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and then asking her to marry him is deliciously perverse.

The students are generally undeveloped, although Phoebe Strole is bright as Epiphany, the over-eager drama queen. Keener has a wonderful moment where she drunkenly licks salt off the rim of a mammoth margarita and Elisabeth Shue puts in a random cameo playing herself.

But the film rests on the uneven shoulders of Coogan, a British comic who should know it is funny to bare his buns once, but not twice. He mugs his way through the role, sometimes appealingly, sometimes not, and sometimes imitating Martin Short, for some reason.

"Hamlet 2" is enjoyable enough in parts. But oh, what a piece of work this could have been.

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Contact Daniel Neman at (804) 649-6408 or dneman@timesdispatch.com. HAMLET 2 Movie review ½ Cast: Steve Coogan, Phoebe Strole At: Short Pump, Southpark, Virginia Center FYI: Running time: 1:32. Rated R (language)