I don’t like the National Spelling Bee. You’d think I would, but I don’t. Not sure exactly what I dislike the most – is it the way it reduces intellectual might to a one-dimensional parlor game? Is it the parents treating their children of enormous IQ like trained seals? Is it the format, which allows for more chance than a roulette table? To me this whole thing is like gathering up the world’s greatest athletes, putting them in a room full of unicycles and deciding the champion by who rides out first.
However, as cameras are generally so fond of physical gifts as opposed to intellectual ones, I have no interest in doing away with the televised miracle of nerdy Asian American kids stammering random letters in front of a microphone. It’s hard to say whether Bad Words shares my lack of enthusiasm for spelling bees in general, but it certainly was interested in different take on them.
Jason Bateman takes the helm here, directing himself as an absolute jackass. And he makes no bones about it (the jackass part that is). He tells us right off the bat that he’s not making good decisions, the most obvious of which is that he’s a forty-year-old man competing in the National Spelling Bee. He’s literally a man among boys. He spells out quite clearly his eligibility – he has not yet passed the 8th grade. How he’s managed to find work as an instructions manual editor is perhaps more amazing than the eligibility hoops jumped through here. Oh, and Guy Trilby (Bateman) also has a sponsor for his jackassery, e-mag reporter Jenny (Kathryn Hahn). Together, they share a mildly hostile relationship and terrible -and comical- sex.
The phenomenon of a fortysomething competing among the pre-pubescent might have its charms if Trilby were an idiot savant, or magnanimous, or even just a yokel, but he is none of these things: Trilby is a smarmy crass opportunist with an axe to grind and zero conscience. He has no problem handing Jenny’s panties to a fellow competitor and claiming his “mom was great last night” … oh, and “sorry about the future divorce.” I’m guessing you know right now whether or not you want to see this film.
The weird part about Bad Words is while it doesn’t like its hero, he’s different only in the admission of his ugly faults. Bad Words also doesn’t much care for Jenny or
the competition officials (specifically Allison Janney and Philip Baker Hall in particular); the film also relishes in taking down overbearing parents a peg or two. And while most of the children are treated as Benetton ad rejects, it does like one: Chaitanya (Rohan Chand). Left to his own devices, Chaitanya latches on to the reluctant Trilby who, in turn, becomes the kid’s surrogate shoulder devil for a few days. “Never been to a strip club? But you’re ten already!”
It might have crossed your mind, “how does Trilby compete against the kids? They’re better at this. Lots better.” It crossed mine. He doesn’t study and those bee children are like machines. Trilby has something of a photographic memory. Ok, then, why does he cheat? What’s the point of pranking children? Well, hey, that’s just for fun. Were I a parent of a rival child, I would probably have been livid with this man IRL. But then, it has never been that important for my ego or my daughter’s to have my child achieve along these lines at the expense of all else. Hence, I feel like these are good targets to aim for. You might perceive contrarily; my countenance is habitually facetious.
Idiosyncratic hyperpyrexia
Loquacious pulchritude
Phlegmatic hypothermia
Truculent verisimilitude
Narcissistic trousseau
Oleaginous escutcheon
Fasciation nouveau
Mendacious bludgeon
Indubitable bellwether
Hirsute ichthyophagist
Androgynous Affenpinscher
Setaceous philanthropist
Does it matter what they mean?
Not one little bit
It’s the Bad Words shuffle
Into one big pile of s***
Rated R, 89 Minutes
D: Jason Bateman
W: Andrew Dodge
Genre: Destroying an institution
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Anarchists
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Spelling bee contestants
