Teaching Mrs Tingle Review

Kevin Williamson, screenwriter of the two Scream films as well as I Know What You Did Last Summer, reached deep into his bottom drawer to unearth his very first screenplay for Teaching Mrs.Tingle, his directorial debut - but he shouldn`t have bothered. This is yet another high school story. This time student Leigh Ann (Katie Holmes), who desperately needs a scholarship to get out of this small town, is wrongly accused of cheating by nasty teacher Mrs. Tingle, (Helen Mirren). With her two friends Luke, (Barry Watson), and Jo Lynn, (Maris Coughlan), Leigh Ann goes to Mrs. T`s house to plead for another chance; but Mrs. T. is obdurate - and things get out of hand... Neither a thriller nor a comedy, this is a dull cat and mouse game featuring a clutch of desperately uninteresting characters. The pressbook promises "hilarity", but the only instances of mirth on screen are the repeated, and rather desperate, cutaways to Mrs. T`s "cute" dog. The character of the awful teacher is resolutely underdeveloped (what happened to Mr. T? (Probably she ate him), though Helen Mirren tries hard to bring a little style to the character. To no avail. This is a big yawn. Margaret`s comments: There`s one line in this film that I like when one of the teenagers minding the kidnapped-in-her-own-home Mrs. Tingle says `I can`t believe you don`t have a TV! It`s like not having toilet paper.` And if that`s the best you can say about a film, it doesn`t sound promising. I thought at one stage this film might have something to say about how the quality of education impacts on a generation, but no, it doesn`t really have much to say about anything. And much as the splendid Helen Mirren tries to give dignity to Mrs. Tingle she`s working against anything offered her by writer/director Kevin Williamson. It`s not as if it`s a chore to watch, it`s just that in the end you get up and you shrug. Just another Hollywood teen movie that thinks it may be smarter than it can ever hope to be.