Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)
Rating: * * * out of * * * *
Starring: Helen Mirren, Katie Holmes, Melissa Coughlan, Barry Watson, Vivica A. Fox, Molly Ringwald.
Rated PG-13 for thematic content, language, violence, and sexuality.
By first glance 'Teaching Mrs. Tingle' looks like a teen comedy with lots of laughs. Well it is a teen movie, but the laughs are there, but not as much as I had hoped. I did however like the plot, and the performance by Helen Mirren, which saves the movie from being a washout. She is a very good actress, and it shows in this smart, clever, and sometimes funny comedy/thriller. Katie Holmes delievers another good performance, besides the mediocre performance by Barry Watson, the film seems to have all it takes to be a successful film, now we just have to get past the box-office performance of this movie for being so long-delayed.
Kevin Williamson, the 'mastermind' behind films such as 'Scream and Scream 2' 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', 'Halloween: H20', and 'The Faculty' wrote and directed this movie. He as most of you know also writes and executive produces the popular TV show 'Dawson's Creek.' He did do a good job with writing and directing this movie. The script is very clever with some good lines and gags. The directing which he did himself was good too, except for some derivative camerwork.
Katie Holmes plays a not-so-rich girl names Leigh Ann. Her friend Jo Lynn (Marissa Coughlan) (Notice the two names?). After Mrs. Tingle (Helen Mirren) gave a not-so-good grade to Leigh Ann for her history work, she has to do extra credit to make up. A guy named Luke (Barry Watson), who stole a copy of Mrs. Tingle's final exam test, gives it to Leigh Ann, and sticks it in her bag. After Mrs. Tingle finds out, she goes right to to the principle's office. He's not there so she goes home.
The kids go to her house and try to explain what happened. After some words are spewed, Mrs. Tingle is grazed by an arrow, and knocked out cold. The kids tie her up, and try many things to keep her quiet, blackmail, torture, and making her feel bad. But Mrs. Tingle is the teacher from hell. She has no feelings, no heart, no nothing. Some surprising revelations are found towards the end, which makes Mrs. Tingle a whole new person.
I must say, this movie IS NOT the best ever made. Nor is it ever close to being great. But the movie itself was entertaining, and I did enjoy it. I thought some of it was ludicrous (AKA Jo Lynn's re-enactment of 'The Exorcist'). But it was non-the-less enjoyable. The acting was good too. I was kept on the edge of my seat by the end, and was glad I got to see this movie. "Teaching Mrs. Tingle" is no classic, but it is a worthy peice of work by Kevin Williamson.
Reviewed August 21, 1999 by Brandon Herring. Brandon Herring Movie Review Heaven (http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/movie/3160/moviereviewheaven.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews