Bad Words

3/14/20141h 29m

Theatrical Release (US)

~ The end justifies the mean. ~

Overview:

Forty-year-old misanthrope, Guy Trilby, enters the National Golden Quill Spelling Bee through a loophole in the rules.

Director:

Jason Bateman

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$9,500,000.00

Revenue:

$7,800,000.00

Key words:

competition
satire
spelling bee
unlikely friendship
anger issues

Cast

Jason Bateman

~ as ~

Guy Trilby

Kathryn Hahn

~ as ~

Jenny Widgeon

Rohan Chand

~ as ~

Chaitanya Chopra

Philip Baker Hall

~ as ~

Dr. Bowman

Allison Janney

~ as ~

Dr. Bernice Deagan

Ben Falcone

~ as ~

Pete Fowler

Steve Witting

~ as ~

Proctor at Spelling Bee

Beth Grant

~ as ~

Bedazzled Judge

Gwen Parden

~ as ~

Brace Faced Girl

Anjul Nigam

~ as ~

Sriram Chopra

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

Reno
Written 10 year(s) ago
6

Good lie, bad words and ugly truth.

I thought it was Cliff Curtis' movie because that's whom I saw in one of the posters. Anyway, it's Jason Bateman's movie, which is also his first directional venture. A refreshing theme because only a very few movies were made based on the spelling bee contest, but this one was a bit messed up story narration. Most of the narrative looked so pale and dull. It is supposed to be an exciting storytelling with blistering pace.

You know, stories in the movies happen with a backdrop of the reasons. Like a piece of uninteresting wood carved into a something that attracts everybody. Some movie holds it till the end to reveal that beauty in the form of a twist, but some won't mind explaining it along the way. In this movie, what they had for the twist was lifeless, boring one, more like a cliché from the older days flick.

The boy from the movie 'Jack and Jill' was decent. I felt some material in the movie was inappropriate regarding a minor in one of the lead roles. But I know the title clearly suggests it is only for adults. Understandable that the writer wanted to give something new, but he could not get it right. Maybe lacked to bring some interesting and inspiring elements. What surprised me was, it was not either for commercial benefit nor a fine art piece.

All the way I knew something was not clinching and finally found out the approach to portray the main character in the negative mode had to do with something. They wanted the viewers to go against him and well, they got it in a way. Interestingly the screenplay was from the 'Black List' which was untouched for almost 10 years. Unfortunately Bateman decided to give it a try and the result is,... Here I'm with not satisfied fully, but okay-okay movie for being at least something different.

6/10