One of the perks you can get if you're a highly successful screenwriter is the freedom to direct your own little vanity productions. If, for example, you're Kevin Williamson, the creator of the enormously profitable "Scream" films and the highly successful "Dawson's Creek," you might even be able to take an old script out of the closet, dust it off and sell it to Dimension Films. That's exactly how "Teaching Mrs. Tingle" came to be. Unfortunately, the downside of having so much creative license is that you might wind up putting something on the screen that in no way compares with your best work. "Tingle" is just such a picture.
The movie has already been a subject of controversy in light of the Columbine shootings last spring -- Dimension was forced to alter the original title "Killing Mrs. Tingle" and shelve some TV ads that made light of alcoholism -- but the film itself is essentially rather tame and bland. Viewers expecting a bloody black comedy won't find it here.
What they'll get instead is a stellar performance from Helen Mirren as Mrs. Tingle, a vicious history teacher who rules her classroom -- and the entire school, it seems -- with an iron fist and withering sarcasm. Mirren singlehandedly rescues the project from being pointless nonsense; this brilliant actress can communicate more with a twitch of a lip or a well-timed flick of her eyelashes than anyone else in the cast can with pages of dialogue.
Katie Holmes (of "Creek" fame) plays Leigh Ann, a would-be valedictorian whose chances of getting much-needed scholarships hinge on her grade from Tingle. But despite having prepared as a final project an elaborate diary of an accused witch in 17th-century Salem, Leigh Ann finds Tingle is impossible to impress. In fact, Tingle despises Leigh Ann and jumps at the chance to implicate her in a cheating scandal.
In the hopes of setting things right, Leigh Ann and friends Jo Lynn (Marisa Coughlan) and Luke (Barry Watson) pay a visit to Tingle's home one night. Unexpected complications ensue, and therein hangs the rest of the plot.
For a movie that spends much time discussing and defining "irony," "Tingle" doesn't have many twists to offer. Nor has Williamson brought along the quirkiness that made "Scream" and "Scream 2" so much fun. Almost everything in "Tingle" is predictable, from Tingle's uptight wardrobe to Leigh Ann's long-suffering waitress-mom (Lesley Ann Warren) to the sight of a long and winding staircase just waiting for someone to fall down it. Even the musical score, which combines bits of the Wicked Witch's theme from "The Wizard of Oz" and Bernard Herrmann's "Psycho," is overly obvious.
Though Holmes, in garish eye makeup, tries valiantly to turn Leigh Ann into someone worth caring about, she's defeated by the script, which constantly forces supposedly smart people to do ridiculous things. As the stereotypical hunk and ditz, Watson and Coughlan barely squeak by. Aside from Mirren, the only other cast member to make an impression is former teen queen Molly Ringwald, who shows up as an office clerk recruited as a substitute in Tingle's classroom. The improbable sight of Ringwald teaching school is certain to make anyone over 30 feel every bit their age. James Sanford
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