"It's hard to get somebody to write you a check for a few million dollars and say, 'Go make a movie.' It takes a lot of trust, and they've got to believe that you've got the know-how. "Bad Words," made for under $10 million, is distributed by Focus Features, a division of Comcast Corp's NBC Universal. | 'St.Bateman said he waited until now to make his directorial debut, drawing on his years of experience in front of the camera to find funding for the film.| 'Nightcrawler' follows Jake Gyllenhaal into heart of news cycle's darkness.| 'Birdman' a flight of soaring surrealism.| 'Big Hero 6' has heart, but defaults to action-movie mode.| 'Citizenfour' follows Snowden down rabbit hole of surveillance state.| 'Interstellar' goes into space in search of inner truth.| With 'Rosewater,' Jon Stewart loses powerful story's focus.Rated: R nudity, sex, pervasive profanity Getting to the point where these motives are revealed, then, becomes the point in a mildly amusing, and modestly if efficiently mounted, film which, when not politically incorrect or confrontational, is too joyless and generic for words.Įmail: up with movies on film critic Duane Dudek's blog, The Dudek Abides: /dudek.Ĭast: Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn, Rohan Chand, Allison Janney, Philip Baker Hall, Ben Falconeīehind the scenes: Produced by Jason Bateman, Jeff Culotta, Sean McKittrick and Mason Novick. His purpose is to disrupt his reasons are his own. His media sponsor is a news website whose frizzy-haired reporter in sensible shoes, played by Kathryn Hahn, shares awkward adult activities with him in the broom closet of the hotel room he is assigned to by the competition organizers, played by Allison Janney and Philip Baker Hall.īateman's racially insensitive teasing of a smart but lonely boy played by Rohan Chand, who becomes his nemesis and confidante, are among the least offensive utterances in the scorched-earth array of insults, epithets and profanity that Bateman's character hurls at parents, organizers and even kids who stand in his way.Ĭhand previously played the son of the terrorist Abu Nazir on "Homeland."īeneath his buzz cut, misogynist insults and misanthropic scowl, Bateman's character is emotionally vulnerable in ways that feel overly familiar and of no real consequence in the end.Īny broadly drawn similarities between the childhood of Bateman and Chand's absentee parents, specifics aside, are not coincidental.īeneath the callous exterior of Bateman's character is a wounded psyche for whom ruining the spelling bee has personal meaning. Why he may or may not want to is the film's big reveal. Jason Bateman, making his feature directing debut after directing episodes of his "Arrested Development" series, plays an adult who uses a loophole to enter a spelling bee and whose eidetic memory all but guarantees he will win if he chooses. Or tries to be.Ĭuriously, eighth-grade boys might be the ones most interested in such calculatingly transgressive material, including nudity and multisyllable profanity from the mouths of babes. When is a movie about an eighth-grade spelling bee not appropriate for children? When it's the raunchy comedy "Bad Words," which is the "Bad Santa" of the genre.
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