By 
“BAD WORDS” ***
Words have the incredible power of changing, uniting, healing or destroying. While many people still persevere in maintaining a decent vocabulary, others have transformed the way of communicating with a new wave of disrespectful speeches.
Cinema has also found a way of changing the concept of comedy, presenting its contemporary form of making audiences laugh: through absurdism, vulgarity and mocking. Since Jude Apatow and The Hangover series earned profitable results, the industry rapidly promoted the new comedic aesthetic, becoming the only option offered in modern times: fun out of dirty words.
Jason Bateman couldn’t have chosen a better script for his directorial debut. The versatile and charming comedian, proves competence as a first time director, conducting a funny piece centered in the facts of wisdom, and the power of words. He’s also aware that audiences have fallen for the new irreverence, and bombs the screen with loads of pervasive and offensive lines. That’s actually the main characteristic in his role, a 40-year-old loser who makes his way into the Spelling Bee Contest, irritating everyone, especially the parents who worked hard to bring their children to that respectful contest. Mysteriously determined to go farther with his plan of winning the contest, Guy has no charisma, he’s completely abusive, selfish and has no limits to insult any and everyone. The audience develops a sense of contempt about him, due to his irrelevant acts. But as a journalist follows him through his madness, writing a piece about his persistence, and a kid who insists in trying on an unusual friendship, we learn other aspects that will justify in part, his actions.
Bateman, now as a director, introduces a coherent examination on relationship and fatherhood issues, giving the film and his character, a chance to rescue them out of the highlighted dirty humor. Of course, these are only shadows in order to fulfill the needs of a reasonable narrative, yet what really matters here is the goal to entertain with the sarcasm of a Hollywood product aiming big numbers.
Although it’s a fine start for Bateman as a director, with the support of the hilarious cast, the film is a high quality entertainment, undoubtedly funny, but at the end it’s just a fast fun that will make one laugh with the insulting language but will soon be forgotten as another example of a disposable work conceived on the basis of the contemporary humor that keeps changing our definition of fun.
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