'Bad Words,' a spelling bee comedy, features a tiptop cast

'Bad Words' is directed by and stars Jason Bateman as an adult who competes with kids in a national spelling bee.

|
Sam Urdank/Focus Features/AP
'Bad Words' stars Jason Bateman (center).

“Bad Words” does to spelling bees what “Bad Santa” did to Santa Claus. Jason Bateman plays Guy Trilby, a dyspeptic high school dropout who enters the Golden Quill National Spelling Bee by exploiting a loophole allowing him to compete with kids. Why would he want to do such a thing? The ultimate answer is as sappy as the rest of the film isn’t.

Directed by Bateman in his first solo effort and written by Andrew Dodge, the film is an irreverant jape with its fair share of standout comic performances. Besides Bateman, the tiptop cast includes Philip Baker Hall, Kathryn Hahn, little Rohan Chand as Guy’s chief adversary, and Allison Janney as the spelling bee’s ramrod-tough director. Grade: B+ (Rated R for crude and sexual content, language and brief nudity.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Bad Words,' a spelling bee comedy, features a tiptop cast
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2014/0314/Bad-Words-a-spelling-bee-comedy-features-a-tiptop-cast
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe