The sooner Hollywood realizes that Kevin Williamson used all of his writing talent to put out Scream, the sooner America can be rid of films such as Teaching Mrs. Tingle. I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty, Halloween H2O, and the confusingly popular and very annoying Dawson's Creek all look like masterpiece's of cinema and television compared to this dreadful attempt of a movie. It is truly so bad that one cannot help oneself from laughing out loud at certain times, when laughs were the exact opposite reaction the director was going for. At other times watching the movie evokes actual physical pain.
The story revolves around Leigh Ann (Katie Holmes), who is the perfect, innocent student whose life ambition is to be a writer. Standing in her way of getting the scholarship she needs to attend college and pursue her dreams to the fullest is Mrs. Tingle (Helen Mirren), a almost Hitler like history teacher who, for some reason that is never truly explained, will do anything she can to ruin Leigh Ann's life. When the school loser Luke (Barry Watson), who is the love interest of both Leigh Ann and best friend Jo Lynn (Marisa Coughlan), steals the Tingle final exam and tries to get Leigh Ann in on it, the cat-like Mrs. Tingle is right there to spoil the plot and blame Leigh Ann for the crime. Venturing to Tingle's house after school to try and explain things, Luke, Jo Lynn and Leigh Ann turn trying to persuade the evil teacher to not accuse Leigh Ann of cheating into a full fledged hostage situation. The rest of the movie drones along at a painstaking pace, going down every predictable road in the book, and ending with a sickeningly obvious conclusion.
Katie Holmes is the only saving grace in this film, and most of that is due to her painfully cute appearance. She plays the same character she has played in every role she has ever been given, the young, innocent, bright girl who has more morals than the Pope on Christmas. It would not have been a shock to see Dawson dash through the door of Tingle's house with an overly mature, long winded solution to the problem and then leave just as quickly. Helen Mirren makes the part of Mrs. Tingle very hard to relate to and is so over the top of her performance that you forget she is supposed to be just a history teacher and not some international terrorist being sought after in a Tom Clancy novel. Her ambivalance to the situation she is put in, the way she almost relishes being held captive by the three teens is so out of place that it borders on insulting.
While Helen may have made Mrs. Tingle the most unrealistic character in the movie, the award for worst actress goes to, hands down, Marisa Coughlan. Her portrayal of the horny actress Jo Lynn is so bad I was hoping someone had brought a hungry, wet baby who already hated life just to take my mind off of her. Her scene where she imitates the wonderful film The Exorcist is so embarrassing that I had to look away from the screen until it was over. Even her beauty is not enough to overpower her terrible performance, and the fact that she is so bad seems to take away from her appearance. It is truly extraordinary, so bad that it almost becomes another entity in the movie, and leaves one wondering how, in a profession so many try and fail, how someone like that can squeak through the cracks. Oh, and one more note, Luke (Barry Watson) is the most inconsequential character I have ever seen in a movie and the fact that he is supposed to be the school loser is not helped by the fact that he speaks as if he were a literary student at Oxford.
Overall, this movie is just terrible. It is so badly conceived, so badly acted, so badly directed, and so badly written that it offers no moments of levity at all. It is very rare to find a movie that possesses none of the qualities a good film has. Kevin Williamson proves, once again, that he is the most overrated writer on the planet and that his dialogue is the same for every character, for every situation. Note to Kevin; no high school students, and very few college students for that matter, talk as if they are Rhodes Scholars. Go watch American Pie to get a sense of the generation you always write about. Until then, leave the film making to people with a clue as to what they are doing.
The story revolves around Leigh Ann (Katie Holmes), who is the perfect, innocent student whose life ambition is to be a writer. Standing in her way of getting the scholarship she needs to attend college and pursue her dreams to the fullest is Mrs. Tingle (Helen Mirren), a almost Hitler like history teacher who, for some reason that is never truly explained, will do anything she can to ruin Leigh Ann's life. When the school loser Luke (Barry Watson), who is the love interest of both Leigh Ann and best friend Jo Lynn (Marisa Coughlan), steals the Tingle final exam and tries to get Leigh Ann in on it, the cat-like Mrs. Tingle is right there to spoil the plot and blame Leigh Ann for the crime. Venturing to Tingle's house after school to try and explain things, Luke, Jo Lynn and Leigh Ann turn trying to persuade the evil teacher to not accuse Leigh Ann of cheating into a full fledged hostage situation. The rest of the movie drones along at a painstaking pace, going down every predictable road in the book, and ending with a sickeningly obvious conclusion.
Katie Holmes is the only saving grace in this film, and most of that is due to her painfully cute appearance. She plays the same character she has played in every role she has ever been given, the young, innocent, bright girl who has more morals than the Pope on Christmas. It would not have been a shock to see Dawson dash through the door of Tingle's house with an overly mature, long winded solution to the problem and then leave just as quickly. Helen Mirren makes the part of Mrs. Tingle very hard to relate to and is so over the top of her performance that you forget she is supposed to be just a history teacher and not some international terrorist being sought after in a Tom Clancy novel. Her ambivalance to the situation she is put in, the way she almost relishes being held captive by the three teens is so out of place that it borders on insulting.
While Helen may have made Mrs. Tingle the most unrealistic character in the movie, the award for worst actress goes to, hands down, Marisa Coughlan. Her portrayal of the horny actress Jo Lynn is so bad I was hoping someone had brought a hungry, wet baby who already hated life just to take my mind off of her. Her scene where she imitates the wonderful film The Exorcist is so embarrassing that I had to look away from the screen until it was over. Even her beauty is not enough to overpower her terrible performance, and the fact that she is so bad seems to take away from her appearance. It is truly extraordinary, so bad that it almost becomes another entity in the movie, and leaves one wondering how, in a profession so many try and fail, how someone like that can squeak through the cracks. Oh, and one more note, Luke (Barry Watson) is the most inconsequential character I have ever seen in a movie and the fact that he is supposed to be the school loser is not helped by the fact that he speaks as if he were a literary student at Oxford.
Overall, this movie is just terrible. It is so badly conceived, so badly acted, so badly directed, and so badly written that it offers no moments of levity at all. It is very rare to find a movie that possesses none of the qualities a good film has. Kevin Williamson proves, once again, that he is the most overrated writer on the planet and that his dialogue is the same for every character, for every situation. Note to Kevin; no high school students, and very few college students for that matter, talk as if they are Rhodes Scholars. Go watch American Pie to get a sense of the generation you always write about. Until then, leave the film making to people with a clue as to what they are doing.