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Teaching
Mrs. Tingle
(1999) |
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Films aimed at teenagers have been proliferating ever since Clueless from a few years ago hit the jackpot. Then, Scream established the teen market as an enormously profitable area waiting to be exploited in the fullest way and so we have had a speight of teen films in the last year and a half - surprisingly many of them have been perfectly acceptable and quite entertaining. Kevin Williamson is a name that has been at the forefront of the teen phenomena as he has whipped up hip, sassy scripts for Scream, Scream 2, Halloween H20 as well as I Know What You Did Last Summer and the hit TV series Dawson's Creek - all sizable money earners that has turned Williamson into one of Hollywood's hottest properties of the day. However, all good things come to an end and with his film directorial debut, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, the Midas touch seems to have cruelly deserted him. The film, set in the obligatory high school is about brilliant and hardworking student Leigh Ann who is victimized by the schools monstrous history teacher Mrs. Tingle therefore jeopardizing the girl's chances of achieving her dream of a college future. Tingle, played by Helen Mirren, catches Leigh Ann "cheating" and threatens her with expulsion. What follows is an attempt by the three students to set things straight which goes a little awry and they end up holding Mrs. Tingle hostage, tied up to her own bed within her home. The film thereafter follows the students attempts at salvaging the situation. The film tries to present itself as a sharp satire about the cutthroat rat-race American lifestyle a little like the wonderfully subtle Election. But while Election had focus, wit and a clear objective, Mrs. Tingle is all dressed up but just doesn't know where to go. The plot meanders horribly while the kids decide what to do with Tingle. There are attempts at farce and comedy which fall completely flat and end up causing embarrassing silences where laughter should have been filling the theater. The scene where the friend of Leigh Ann does an impersonation of Linda Blair in The Exorcist is dreadfully unfunny and leaves one completely stunned at the awfulness of it all - but alas such attempts are littered through the movie in a desperate attempt to make it appear amusing. Nothing works and the film meanders and languishes until the audience is either asleep or then staring at their watches wishing that the duration of this exercise in high tedium would somehow come to and end. How sad to see such talent as Helen Mirren and even Michael McKean of Spinal Tap being reduced to such tortuous garbage as this. The film
has no redeeming features at all and is best expunged from memory
as soon as can be. It is difficult to recall a more tedious
movie watching experience over the last year than Teaching
Mrs. Tingle…………painful, unintelligent and hugely boring.
Watching paint dry would have been a better option. |
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