This morning a friend at 42 West asked me to post the new green-band trailer for Jason Bateman‘s Bad Words (Focus Features, 3.14). “Due respect but what’s the point of a GREEN-BAND trailer for a smart, nervy, occasionally profane, envelope-pushing movie like Bad Words?,” I replied. “Agreed, there’s a lot more to Bad Words than just nervy dialogue, but surely the RED-BAND trailer is more to the point. Putting out a GREEN-BAND trailer for Bad Words makes as much sense as putting out a RED-BAND trailer for a re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Again: Jason Bateman‘s Bad Words is “an ascerbic spelling-bee comedy aimed at the diminishing ranks of non-moronic moviegoers. It’s a kind of Rushmore-meets-Bad Santa piece about a pissed-off, close-cropped 40something guy (Bateman) who takes advantage of a loophole to compete against kids in the National Quill Spelling Bee competition, and in so doing bonds/warms up to/gets down with a reporter (Kathryn Hahn) and a 10 year-old Indian kid (Rohan Chand) as he seeks a kind of satisfaction that has nothing to do with winning the $50,000 first prize.
“Dry, subdued, bordering-on-perverse performances + Andrew Dodge‘s witty-ass, occasionally scatalogical screenplay resulted in much laughter. Some wondered if the film goes ‘too far,’ as one questioner inquired. Trust me, the ‘too far’ stuff is one of the main reasons the film went over so well.” — from 9.7.13 Toronto Film Festival post.
