A Crash Course In Humiliation

By RICHARD CORLISS

She churns down the school corridors to music that sounds like the theme for The Wizard of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West; students scatter rather than get caught in the laser beam of her cool rage. In history class she makes one think of Harry Potter's Professor Snape, so regal is her malevolence, so acute her gift for the demeaning remark that cuts through the skin of her best students and into their fragile egos. Her intellect has veered into artful cruelty. Her ambition has been curdled by this life sentence in a town she was dying to leave, and by having to teach idiots who may get a ticket out. A figure of fear, and possibly pity, Eve Tingle is a nightmare pedagogue --the teacher from Hell High.

A shame she's not in a better movie. Teaching Mrs. Tingle, a revenge comedy from Kevin Williamson, sets up a battle between twisted Mrs. T (Helen Mirren, the British classical actress who is in way under her head here) and sweet, studious Leigh Ann (Katie Holmes). When Tingle threatens to frame her for stealing an exam, Leigh Ann counts on two pals to bail her out: her best friend (Marisa Coughlan, quite funny as a carefully histrionic tyro actress) and the Depp-ish, droolworthy class rebel (Barry Watson). Before you can say oops, they have Tingle trussed to her bedposts and, the kids think, in their power. There are maybe six good lines, and many more dramatic chances wasted. Williamson, the writer of Scream and TV's Dawson's Creek, now directing his first movie, needs a crash course in choreographing screen tension.

The film was once called Killing Mrs. Tingle, until events at Columbine High made the notion of teacher homicide just a bit less amusing. But like last year's Apt Pupil, this really is a story about education--about the wary exchange in an old dark house between a nasty adult, seemingly trapped but still full of guile, and the bright teen who underestimates Satan's knack for temptation. No teen is likely to see the film and take a crossbow to his hated teacher's house. Indeed, nobody is likely to get much out of this slack parable. It is too empty to applaud, too insignificant to deplore.

--By Richard Corliss