- Title: Bad Words
- IMDB: link
As with most of the Bad Santa imitators which have popped up in recent years Bad Words is, at best, a mixed bag. Far better than the unfortunate (and best forgotten) Bad Teacher, this film directed by and starring Jason Bateman about a middle-aged man-child entering a national 8th grade spelling competition to deal with his own personal issues certainly provides its share of laughs along the way.
When we first meet Guy Trilby (Bateman) he’s already worming his way into a qualifying round of a local spelling bee with the help of a blogger (Kathryn Hahn) and a loophole in the guidelines which allows anyone who has not yet graduated from the eighth grade entry into the bee.
To call Trilby a self-serving prick isn’t really doing justice to the man determined to make a mockery of the competition on national television much to the dismay of countless parents and those in charge of the spelling bee (Philip Baker Hall, Allison Janney). By the time the film gets around to revealing Trilby’s reasons (which are as self-serving as every other piece of his character) it doesn’t really matter as nothing could possibly justify the actions we witness.
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