Wicked, smart, mean-spirited fun with a heart, Jason Bateman could not have chosen a better project than Bad Words for his directorial debut, as it allows him to spotlight both his clear talent for choreographing comedic moments as a director and his already-well-established talent for making those moments come to life as an actor.
In front of the camera, Bateman plays Guy Trilby, a 40-year-old man who never finished 8th grade and who has taken it upon himself to wreck a prestigious national spelling bee just as its about to make its nationwide television debut. His motives for exploiting a loophole in the contestant entry rules in order to compete and ruthlessly crush his fellow competitors (all children, of course) on-stage and behind the scenes he keeps to himself. But he’s promised to tell his full story to reporter Jenny Widgeon (Kathryn Hahn) in return for her online publication’s sponsorship of his entry, so Jenny puts up with his outright rude and antisocial antics, even when she’s the victim of them.
As Guy bulldozes his way through regional qualifiers, baffled spelling bee judges and infuriated parents of other competitors on his way to the national finals of the Golden Quill National Spelling Bee, he draws the ire of the competition’s director (Allison Janney) and Golden Quill’s esteemed founder (Philip Baker Hall), who each commit to stopping Guy’s bid to win the competition any way they can. Only one problem: Guy’s a LOT smarter than they are and he’s ready to prove it.
The only person seemingly unfazed by Guy’s outrageous behavior is Chopra (Rohan Chand), an indefatigably cheerful and chatty fellow competitor who for no apparent reason decides that Guy should be his new best friend. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Guy’s most of all, Guy takes on a secondary quest: to show Chopra what living is like outside of studying for spelling competitions. What’s Guy’s definition of “living”? Let’s just say it has nothing to do with what society would consider appropriate behavior for either a child or an adult.
There’s nothing worse than a comedy that sells itself as “subversive,” lures you in with its nastiest bits couched in a nifty, well-edited trailer, and then sells out in the final act with unearned sentiment and a cheesy, “feel-good” ending. The 2012 Will Farrell-Zack Galifianakis politics spoof The Campaign is arguably the best recent example of this: a movie that’s front-loaded with as many meant-to-offend gags and no-holds-barred satire as the writers can muster, but then backs off the gas pedal in the last 30 minutes in order to give audiences an ending where everyone wins. It makes everything that came before ring false, and the whole thing feel like a waste of time.
Rest assured that Bad Words thankfully does not go that route. Screenwriter Andrew Dodge delivers a script wherein any sentiment and “warm fuzzies” you may feel by the end are entirely earned, and still ring true with who the characters are and what they’re all about as established earlier in the film. The script also cleverly delays the reveal of Guy’s true motives to build a certain level of suspense. By the time the audience does get the answer to that question, they’re hungering for it just as much as they are Guy’s next act of sabotage of his competition.
As a director, Bateman takes the script and delivers a film that comes in at a lean 88 minutes, avoids the trap of dwelling on sappy “awwww” moments between Guy and Chopra, and effectively shows off the sense of comic timing and staging that Bateman has perfected as a performer throughout his long career in film and television. He also gets some truly hilarious performances out of his cast to go along with his own terrific work, in particular the very funny Kathryn Hahn (We’re the Millers) and Allison Janney (The Way Way Back), who’s proven throughout her career that she’s just as adept at comedy as she is at drama. Watch also for Rachael Harris (Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”) in a small but hilariously memorable role as a parent of one of Guy’s fellow competitors, and for young Rohan Chand, who gets a ton of screen time as Guy’s partner in crime and manages to be every bit as sweet as Guy is sour and still not get on your nerves.
Considering Guy’s antics, that’s quite a feat.
Score: 4 out of 5
Bad Words
Starring Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn, Rohan Chand, Ben Falcone, with Philip Baker Hall and Allison Janney. Directed by Jason Bateman.
Running Time: 88 minutes
Rated R for crude and sexual content, language and brief nudity.