Hamlet 2 is what happens when you mash up a genre spoof with one of those character-study comedies that derives its laughs from mercilessly filming ridiculous people who can’t help but make asses of themselves—think of it as a Christopher Guest movie informed less by This is Spinal Tap and more by the sensibilities of co-writer Pam Brady, who’s spent the majority of her writing career working alongside Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. Brady wrote the movie with director Andrew Fleming, whose resumé seems comprised mostly of journeyman writer-director work and plenty of paying-the-bills fare. So there’s that, too.

Hamlet 2 is not actually a sequel to Hamlet, per se. It is instead the story of failed actor Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) and his failing job as teacher for a failing drama department in one big fail of a town that goes by the name of Tucson, Arizona. Dana’s wife Brie (Catherine Keener, criminally underutilized) actively detests him, their roommate Gary (David Arquette) is a black hole of dullness, and Dana’s stage adaptations of Hollywood movies can’t get any respect from the school paper’s 12-year-old drama critic. Life sucks, and Dana’s a loser.

The drama critic, however, inspires Dana to put together something of his own—no more stage renditions of Erin Brockovich, but something Dana can pour his heart and soul into. Thus springs forth Dana’s opus, Hamlet 2, wherein Hamlet discovers a time traveling machine, picks up Jesus (played by Dana himself), and comes to the future, all of which gives Dana a perfect platform to work out his daddy issues. A timely axing of all other extracurricular activities brings in a large group of “gangster” Hispanic kids to fill out Dana’s cast, and off they go.

Parents protest the play’s content, the ACLU gets involved, musical numbers about “Sexy Jesus” are written, the school threatens to shut down the drama department, and so on. You get the idea. Elements of Dangerous Minds and its ilk are at play here, which works well even when Dana outright announces that he’s just watched Dangerous Minds and then tries to identify which kids fit into which archetypes. The “one last show to save the drama department” shtick is in there, I guess, because the South Park people really, really love riffing on 80’s movies.

It all rests on the shoulders of Coogan, as he seems to fill every scene—every frame—with the enthusiastically clueless and sincere Dana. Dana’s a loser, but he’s at least aware of it, on some level; he even goes so far as to identify himself as enthusiastic yet talentless, because if there’s one thing Hamlet 2’s comedy is not, it’s understated. Coogan is a gifted comic actor who can play it broad and subtle, and here he manages to pull off a bit of both: Dana is objectively ridiculous, but considerably less so if you’ve known theater people yourself.

And, I think, that’s where a lot of the humor lies. Either you’re into the movie spoofs or not, and either you recognize theater types or you don’t. Many of the smaller roles are scattershot and sometimes distracting—Amy Poehler’s ACLU lawyer is a big bag of WTF, and the joke behind Elisabeth Shue’s appearance is that she’s Elisabeth Shue—but there’s enough here to keep your attention. Hamlet 2 isn’t what you’d call a great comedy; I sincerely doubt I’ll ever see it again. But it passes the time.