The creator in question is Kevin Williamson, who helped put Dimension Films on the map with his script for Scream. Dimension is a division of Miramax, a company that is notoriously proprietary about the talents it promotes (e.g., Quentin Tarantino, Gwyneth Paltrow). Taking note of Williamson's success away from the fold (I Know What You Did Last Summer, TV's Dawson's Creek), Dimension lured Williamson back by allowing him a shot at the director's chair.

Teaching Mrs. Tingle continues the John-Hughes-meets-John-Carpenter aesthetic of Williamson's previous films. An A-student from a poor family (Katie Holmes)--as well as her actress-wannabe friend (Marisa Coughlan) and their mutual bad-boy crush (Barry Watson)--is accused of cheating by the meanest teacher in school (Helen Mirren). While attempting to reason with nasty Mrs. Tingle, a series of mishaps ensue, and soon they have their teacher bound and gagged.

What happens next? Essentially, nothing. Mrs. Tingle's shallow villainy is neither explained nor expanded. (Is it a classist thing?) The teens' one-concept personalities are not developed. There's not a single surprising or insightful moment in Teaching Mrs. Tingle--all the characters are who they are from frame one to frame last. Williamson made his rep on his smart dialogue for young people, but here it sounds like he just cribbed lines from Saved By the Bell.

It's hardly worth enumerating all the ways that this film is phony, but let's start with the driving premise. We're to believe that if Katie Holmes (who combines the worst acting traits of Liv Tyler and Drew Barrymore) doesn't make valedictorian, she won't get "the big scholarship," and so will be forced to skip college and follow her mother into life as a waitress in their middle-of-nowhere (and, might I add, quite charming) small town. Apparently, this is a world with no Merit Scholarships or Pell Grants, where a bright young person's future rests with an inexplicably capricious history teacher.

This simplistic setup might survive a broad comedy or a campy horror flick, but Teaching Mrs. Tingle, whatever its genre origins, ends up as dewy-eyed melodrama. If the audience doesn't believe the motivations of the characters, if we can't connect with their problems, pretty soon we start wondering what's making that rumbling noise from the theater next door.

Surely, these problems were present in the original script, just as surely as Kevin Williamson must've been convinced that he could fill in the gaps in his own work through inspired direction. Maybe next time. As for Dimension/Miramax, their loyalty tends to extend as far as the bottom line, so it's unlikely they'll scramble for Williamson in the future. After all, Teaching Mrs. Tingle is more than just a bad movie--it's bad business.