Jason Bateman stars in his feature film directorial debut as Guy Tribly, a 40 year old proofreader for product warranties who ends up #19 on an auditorium stage at the Columbus Ohio spelling bee. It seem’s discover a loophole in the National… Spelling Bee rules that allows him to compete against the adolescent participants.
Why would he want to do that? That’s the question that probing-reporter Jenny (Kathyrn Hahn) asks that Guy Tribly refuses to answer, although from the onset it doesn’t matter much to us as an audience because the film is so hilarious…bursting with one raunchy jokes and circumstances…we just like seeing Bateman being Bateman.
But as we move through the story with this angry man of mid-life-crisis – who happens to bond with a 10 year old genius competitor from India named Chaitanya (Rohan Chand) – we learn he may have a heart afterall, and with that heart comes his real agenda.
Allison Jenny plays the Queen Bee, Dr. Bernice, who takes these championships seriously, while the rest of the cast are backdrop to Bateman and his young Indian friend who he nicknames every Indian slang from “Little Gandhi to “Slumdog.”
And that’s ironic because the film feels like a Bad Santa meets Slumdog Millionaire as the bad antics and winners-fever combine. Batemen has just made the kind of film that his fans need. If with Melissa McCarthy in Identity Thief he was the good guy (boring) and another good guy in Horrible Bosses, in this, he makes the bosses from Horrible Bosses look like their CEO was Mister Rogers. I have two bad words for Jason Bateman: Nasty boy. And it works.