![Teaching Mrs. Tingle [Region 2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Sb0l1B4PL._SL160_.jpg) | |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The poster for Teaching Mrs. Tingle may feature young TV cuties Katie Holmes (Dawson's Creek), Marisa Coughlin (Wasteland), and Barry Watson (Seventh Heaven), but the real star is the actress playing the title character: Helen Mirren. Mirren plays a bitter, tyrannical teacher who, due to circumstantial evidence, believes goody two-shoes Holmes is guilty of cheating on her history final. Holmes, Coughlin, and Watson go to Mirren's home to convince her that there's been a misunderstanding, but Mirren refuses to listen. Terrified that this will ruin her chances to go to college, Holmes and her compatriots knock Mirren out and tie her to her bed. Unfortunately, they haven't any idea what to do next; when Mirren awakes, the situation becomes a battle of wits in which the teenagers are hopelessly outmatched. Coughlin and Watson are pretty to look at and Holmes has some genuine talent and a lot of charm, but Mirren--who's played Shakespeare on the stage and been in movies ranging from lurid and trashy (Caligula) to eerie and arty (The Comfort of Strangers) to lurid, trashy, eerie, and arty (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover)--combines the cutting intelligence of Vanessa Redgrave, the steely will of Judi Dench, and a sensual energy that any young starlet would kill for. For fans of the British TV series Prime Suspect, in which Mirren plays the tough yet vulnerable Inspector Tennyson, this teen comedy-thriller is just an amusing footnote in Mirren's career; but if you've never been transfixed by this actress's mischievous sidelong glances, Teaching Mrs. Tingle might provide a good start. --Bret Fetzer
Teaching Mrs. Tingle [Region 2] Reviews:
Before She Was The Queen... 
2009-08-02 - I love Helen Mirren (Prime Suspect). She is an actor that makes every role she plays appear effortless. She's also quite the beauty, still hot in her "older" years! Watching Ms. Mirren match wits w/ her teen abductors (including a nice turn by Katie Holmes) is a pure joy! She is smart, acidic, and downright eeevil! Her Mrs. Tingle is frightening, even when bound and gagged! You can feel her hate, while watching those wicked wheels turn in her head. TEACHING MRS. TINGLE is a surprisingly intelligent and suspenseful movie. It uses its humor sparingly, never making things ridiculous. Kevin Williamson (Scream 1 and 2) deserves a lot of credit here. He uses restraint, going with a more sinister tone, when things could really have taken a much sillier turn. The only complaint I have is the PG-13 rated version. It's obvious by the "EXORCIST re-enactment" scene that words were overdubbed to miss the R rating. It sort of wrecks an otherwise hilarious sequence. Then again, they had to change the original title (Killing Mrs. Tingle) to start with. Ugh!...
very good at being bad 
2009-06-18 - Helen Mirren does her job very well here:
I found myself wishing she were dead several times.
Sometimes the people who should be looking out for you are are actually looking to do you in for their own little bitter reasons?
It is a good teen movie of a situation
that gets out of control.
2 stars out of 4 
2008-12-28 - The Bottom Line:
A braindead movie that doesn't bother making its imbecilic plot even slightly plausible (how does Mrs. Tingle go to the bathroom?), Teaching Mrs. Tingle should be thanked for virtually ending the career of Kevin Williamson and never mentioned otherwise
What every kid would love to do to a certain teacher. 
2008-03-31 - This movie is truly great and Katie Holmes is at her best. I think that just about every kid in school would love to do what they did and I constantly watch it because it is a very good film in my opinion.
Killing Mr. Griffin....oh wait, Killing Mrs. Tingle! 
2008-03-18 - After Lois Duncan was disappointed that her teen suspense novel "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was turned into a "teen schlock film" it was highly doubtful that she'd give permission for film rights to Kevin Williamson again. So instead he just wrote it in his own words and called it "Teaching Mrs.Tingle". Anyone who read Duncan's novel can see that Williamson just stole her idea. It's even more obvious that it happened after she was unhappy of HIS treatment of her other novel. I remember seeing it in the theater so I could do a compare and contrast afterwards. The movie fails and just shoots for teen eye candy and cheap pop references that wre popular at the time that now look like dusty artifacts!