Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Steve Coogan, the funniest actor you’ve never heard of.

Coogan, the heart and soul of the cult hit “24 Hour Party People” (2002), as well as the brilliant sendup “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story” (2005), is hapless Los Angeles school drama teacher Dana Marschz (pronunciation uncertain) in “Hamlet 2.” Dana’s motto is “to act is to live,” but his scanty professional credits include a commercial for a Jack LaLanne Juicer and an episode of “Xena: Warrior Princess.”

This loser’s student productions at West Mesa High School are nitwit knockoffs of such popular films as “Erin Brockovich,” “Dead Poets Society” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” and they have been mercilessly skewered by the fledgling critic (sic ’em, boy) of the school’s newspaper, the West Mesa Tattler.

Lately, Dana is falling upon even harder times. His (only) class is being canceled at the end of the term. He and his wife, Brie (Catherine Keener), who deals pot to get by and is oddly attracted to their new boarder (a silent David Arquette), have had no luck getting pregnant. On the upside, the nurse at the fertility clinic where they go for help is Elisabeth Shue.

No, really! She has given up acting and become a nurse.

Dana’s new students give him a hard time and treat his class like a joke, which it is. In addition to two sycophantic theater nerds from his prior term are several tough Latino newcomers.

Dana, a recovering alcoholic, roller skates unsteadily in a helmet to school past endless, beckoning liquor stores. One day, he has an epiphany - and I don’t mean his cute student Epiphany Sellars (Phoebe Strole) - and writes a play titled “Hamlet 2.” It’s a sequel to the Bard’s tragedy about the Melancholy Dane involving a time machine, the Gay Men’s Chorus and a sexy Jesus.

You have to see it to believe it. Really ... have to.

Directed by Andrew Fleming (“Nancy Drew”) and co-written by him and “South Park” veteran Pam Brady, “Hamlet 2” is the mutant spawn of all those old Mickey-Rooney/Judy-Garland-“Let’s-Put-on-a-Show” musicals in which the “kids” staged a production in a barn and won the day.

Irreverent and jubilantly “South Park”ish, “Hamlet 2” is a comic consummation devoutly to be wished. What other comedy is going to mash up “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Grease,” Einstein, Freud, Roland Barthes and Al Jazeera?

Amy Poehler has a nice bit as the hard-as-nails ACLU representative Cricket (“I married a Jew”) Feldstein.

But it is Coogan’s inspired portrait of an actor as an existential basket case that gives “Hamlet 2” full comic liftoff. Not since Peter O’Toole in “My Favorite Year” has the role of an actor been played with such madcap abandon.

Will Coogan beat the odds and get an Academy Award nomination for his uproarious turn? I hope so.

(“Hamlet 2” contains drug use, profanity and sexual references.)

Rated R. At AMC Loews Boston Common and Harvard Square Cinema.