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During that wait, there are some pleasures to be had, as dished out by Coogan, who tears into his role with a parodistic energy that is diverting if less than insightful.

And though the cast includes some accomplished Shakespeareans — Kate Eastwood Norris, Todd Scofield and Cody Nickell among them — the parodistic roles into which they’re shoehorned prove to be one-note caricatures embellished with hackneyed accents.

Hidden beneath its parodistic action-comedy exterior is a message, one that doesn’t set out to merely lampoon the genre but to playfully question almost everything about it.

Some of its parodistic winks and turns are clever, and a few of its jokes are funny in a way that’s embarrassing to admit.

That’s because, for all its blatant offensiveness—which, though likely parodistic, is nonetheless unmitigated—the film is a noteworthy reflection of several strange but authentic aspects of moviemaking and moviegoing.