I need to remember that good actors don’t always make good movies. That’s how I got roped into seeing Bad Words, starring Arrested Development’s Jason Bateman (and, sadly, directed by him). As you have probably guessed by now, Bad Words had none of the smart humor of Bateman’s (really creator Mitchell Hurwitz’s) offbeat TV series.
Bad Words is based on a ridiculous premise that isn’t only inane, it’s offensive (and not in the clever way that can turn offensive into hilarious). The whole movie is about a grown man, Guy Trilby (Bateman), who takes advantage of a loophole in the rules and crashes a series of spelling bees, all the way to the top competition, the National Spelling Bee. I won’t divulge his reason, but I will say it’s lame. No amount of explaining can justify the way he bullies the prebubescent contestants, insults everyone around him, and mistreats the journalist (Kathryn Hahn) who follows him around in the hopes of snagging a scoop.
On the upside, Allison Janney (The West Wing) is funny as a very uptight school marm trying to calm parent hysteria during the penultimate competition in Ohio. In retrospect, I should have expected disaster when the movie opened with Trilby excusing his bad behavior in narration: “In retrospect, I guess I could have handled things better…”
Should You See It? No. —D.W.
Viewed at Wehrenberg’s Ronnie’s 20 Cine