Bad
Words
Jason
Bateman stars as Guy Trilby – a 40-year old dude with a chip on
his shoulder. Due to a loophole, the adult has entered a prestigious
Spelling Bee for kids, and he is not holding back on the mind games and
intimidation. Those pre-pubescent wordsmiths don’t have a clue
what they are in for.
Of course, what is a grown man doing entering a spelling bee for kids
and will they be able to stop him?
If the kids can’t, will the parents or common sense stop him?
Bad Words is fun because it is great to see
Bateman being naughty. Working overtime as the movie’s director
and the star, Bateman brings a hilarious mean attitude to the character
without holding back an ounce as Guy curses at the kids, plays tricks
to throw them off their game and outright acts as Bad Santa as
he can without getting sued for copyright infringement. Yes, we have
seen this before, but Bateman is so funny, we don’t mind the
repetition.
Then, writer Andrew Dodge delivers a good script fleshing out the
proceedings with a few subplots to keep you interested in between the
expletive explosions, such as the buddy relationship Guy forms with a
lonely kid, Chaitanya (Rohan Chand), competing in the bee and almost
immune to all of Guy’s tricks, the blogger, Jenny (Kathryn Hahn),
who thinks this story will help propel her to more prominence, and the
various politicking going on behind the scenes of the spelling bee.
Bad Words loses something towards the end as
the great premise needs to be wrapped up, so we learn why Guy is
obsessed with this contest, which is kind of unoriginal and
predictable, but we have so much dirty fun along the way, you can
forgive it.
Bad Words is rated R for crude and sexual
content, language and brief nudity.
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