Of all film genres, comedy has to be the hardest to succeed at. Just take a look at the IMDb Top 250 and you’ll only find a very small handful of comedies listed. The public consciousness is fickle when it comes to what it finds funny in any given decade resulting in an onslaught of identical comedies every few years. It seems like the ones that are always looked back on fondly are either entirely original (Ghostbusters) or throwbacks to what was funny at least ten years prior (Superbad). Jason Bateman’s directorial debut Bad Words is the latter.

Bateman himself plays Guy Trilby, a loser with a high IQ and a knack for being able to spell every word in the dictionary. He’s got a chip on his shoulder (the movie strings you along until the end before revealing why) and dedicates his time and energy into humiliating the participants (and their parents) of the Golden Quill National Spelling Bee, enrolling himself using a loophole in the contest’s rules. He is aided by reporter Jenny Widgeon (Kathryn Hahn) who he has promised to reveal why he’s doing what he’s doing as long as she can keep him in the contest and pay for his lodging and meals. He also finds a new friend in Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand), one of Trilby’s child opponents.

This film is a throwback to the original Bad News Bears and the more recent Bad Santa in that it pulls most of its laughs (and there are a lot of them) from being downright nasty to children. If that isn’t something that makes you laugh, fuck you, you are wrong. While I’m not calling Bad Words a classic, I am saying it nips at the heels of the movies it’s paying homage to.

Everything about this film’s premise works because the cast hit their mark scene after scene. The comic delivery is nearly flawless any time you have Bateman and Hahn on screen together. A reoccurring gag between the two of them keeps getting funnier rather than inciting groans. Ten year old Rohan Chand is excellent as a precocious over-achiever who really just wants a friend; however, don’t let that last sentence fool you into thinking this is a feel-good movie. This film is mean, especially to kids. It’s not until the very end that there’s any kind of warm and fuzzy feeling, which still doesn’t come at the expense of any possible jokes. At a trim 88 minutes, this movie is also the perfect length to get maximum laughs out of a very specific topic.

The only complaint I can give Bad Words is that the pacing seems frantic and scatter-shot in its third act. Things seemingly happen just because they need to happen at that exact moment to get us to the end of the movie. If this were a high concept sci-fi movie or a film that demands attention to every detail I would hold that against it, but it’s not. Bad Words is a goofy but clever comedy that earns enough good will throughout that you can forgive it for not sticking the landing as smoothly as it could have. While it’s not perfect and certainly not a classic, I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t recommend this movie.