Bad Words
Director: Jason Bateman
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 0.5
A bitter man (Bateman), who allegedly never graduated from middle school (?), exploits the rules of a Spelling Bee competition to enter the contest and beat the children involved ... all this self-embarrassment and sociopathic manipulation is simply to get even with his absentee father (Philip Baker Hall), who just so happens to run the program. Struggles mightily to be as skillfully profane and politically incorrect as Bad Santa but ends up just a Daddy Issues movie with a dénouement that's supposed to be cathartic to Bateman's character but only passes off as a slight shrug. There to be the blunt of Bateman's racial humor is poor little Chaitanya (Rohan Chand) who (surprise!) has his own manipulative Bad Dad. This could have very well been called Arrested Development ... but wasn't for obvious reasons.
