Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)

The Worst Film Ever

Load of rubbish!!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Leigh Ann Watson (Katie Holmes) is a high school senior in Grandsboro, California living with her divorced mother Faye (Lesley Ann Warren). She's trying to be valedictorian needing help to go to college. Her best friend Jo Lynn (Marisa Coughlan) likes Luke (Barry Watson) but he actually likes Leigh Ann. Her grades are threatened by her cruel strict teacher Mrs. Tingle (Helen Mirren). After a bad grade from Tingle on a presentation of the Salem witch trial, Leigh Ann is dropped down to second overall by a point. Luke steals the final exam and puts it in Leigh Ann's bag. Tingle finds it and aims to get her expelled. The kids try to talk Tingle out of it but end up taking her prisoner.Helen Mirren is terrific but the kids are not up to her level. Katie Holmes is too much of a goody two shoes and Luke is too much the other way. Both are annoying. It could be argued that the rooting interest is better with Helen Mirren. It would have been an interesting movie if Kevin Williamson had written it that way. However, he's trying very hard to make her seem cruel but she's not actually wrong. She found the stolen exam in Leigh Ann's bag. Any teacher would have expelled her and possibly the other two also.

Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999): Dir: Kevin Williamson / Cast: Helen Mirren, Katie Holmes, Barry Watson, Marisa Coughlan, Jeffrey Tambor: Dreadful horror film meant to represent dislike for unpleasant teachers. What is really being taught here? That revenge and blackmail are humorous comebacks that pays off? Mrs. Tingle is a cruel minded teacher bent on failing students and how she caught the smartest girl in the class with a cheat paper, which was planted on her. Three students travel to her home in hopes of reasoning but it all ends with tingle being tied to a bed in a lame scene involving a crossbow. It is crude, vile and hopelessly dumb. Lame idea brought down by predictable and juvenile storytelling. The concept worked in Nine to Five where three office secretaries kidnap their boss, but that film had wit and characters to root for. Not so in this junk. Kevin Williamson directs as if spoofing from experience. Helen Mirren is much too talented to be playing a woman as unsympathetic as Mrs. Tingle. The roll is about as broad as most slasher film villains. Katie Holmes, Barry Watson and Marisa Coughlan are despicable as the three students who give viewers no reason to believe that they should have ever left grade school let alone graduate. Jeffrey Tambor is a gifted comedian stranded in this cruddy garbage as Coach Richard. Message misfires thanks to complete idiocy. Score: 1 / 10

Helen Mirren plays a villainous character very well in this film, teacher or not, but to root for her to win the battle in the end is insane. I've read several reviews for this film, most of which liked Helen Mirren's performance only, which is probably not the idea Kevin Williamson had in mind. Granted releasing it in theatres shortly after Columbine was not the best move, but maybe the target audience got the humor of it without taking it seriously. Now, did I enjoy the film? Yes. Would I own it? Definitely! In fact, I already do! The young actors do a nice job with their roles, and Helen Mirren as already stated is very easy to hate, but she chews up the screen with every scene she's in. It's one of the better comedies, imo) than some of the so-called gems they're putting out now, the re-make craze is getting old too, except for some of the horror and revenge flicks.The story centers around Leigh Ann Watson/Katie Holmes-who's concluding her senior year, but also wants to be her school's best student. But with her history teacher hating her, that goal could be very hard to achieve... Accused of cheating, unjustly, Leigh Ann and two other friends decide to try and reason with her, but their plan backfires, and things get out of control, quickly. Now, their goal was never murder, and it doesn't go that far either, let's just say, her cruelty finally comes back to haunt her in the end, watch it and you'll see.

3 students get more than they bargained for when a theft of a test results paper leads to a deadly battle of wills with their kidnapped teacher, Mrs. Tingle.It seems to me that director and writer, Kevin Wiliamson, got confused as to which direction the film should go in. At times it's jaunty when the scene appears to call for menace, and at others just plain boring if the scene was meant to be actually funny {in that sarcastic, almost satirical way}. The film could of worked at either being a comedy or a thriller, but the fusion of the two just doesn't work, and this failing has to fall at Williamson's door, it's as if Scream was all a fluke after all? The cast struggle with the meanderingly dull screenplay, only the stoic {and sexy} Helen Mirren salvaging any sort of dignity by realising early on that the core of the film calls for deft nastiness instead of outright villainy.Poor and practically unwatchable these days. 2/10