Bad Teacher. An Education. Bad Education. Bad Santa. Like with a human being, one might say there is nothing more personable to a person than their name. However, it can become lost in the weeds when a movie doesn’t have a title that can quickly be associated with it. Furthermore, if the film isn’t memorable and has no recognizable title, it’s likely to get even further caught in the weeds. Such could have been, and likely was to many, Cory Finley’s (Thoroughbreds) Bad Education.
Starring the great Hugh Jackman (Logan, Les Miserables), Bad Education tells the real-life story of Frank Tassone, the disgraced Superintendent of The Roslyn Union Free School District who, over eleven years during the late 1990s and early 2000s, embezzled more than $12 million of taxpayers money. Thoroughly engrossing, I was unaware that this film was based on a true story until the end credits told what became of Tassone and Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney – I, Tonya, Bombshell), his business administrator and second in command.
Played with an exaggerated caricature of characters that fit the mold similar to movies like I, Tonya, The Big Short, Vice, or The Wolf of Wall Street, Bad Education is one of those movies that you shouldn’t be able to take seriously…if it all wasn’t entirely true. Jackman portrays Tassone as a more prominent showman than he did P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman. Adored by all for his ability to remember students’ names and lead book clubs for mothers in his community, Tassone went to great lengths to appease students, staff, and parents with individual acts that showed to everyone that he was the most influential person in the school system. Cherished equally by members of the community who didn’t even have a child in the school system, Tassone’s leadership helped make Roslyn the fourth-ranked school district in the country. Roslyn students score high on standardized testing, and graduates attend the best colleges and universities nationwide and abroad. In addition, the value of homes in the community skyrocketed during his tenure, something wealthy and greedy School Board members like Bob Spicer (Ray Romano – CBS’s Everybody Loves Raymond, The Irishman) know isn’t by chance. Would School Board members and others be willing to overlook an expense report that seemed a little inflated? Would it be better to refrain from asking questions than to hear answers that would potentially end this period of prosperity?
Dressed to the nines for whatever the event called for, Frank’s wardrobe rivaled a department store. He was obsessed with his appearance. We repeatedly witness him moisturizing his face or checking to see if he has any fat marks, which seem less likely than most due to the craftsmanship of adroit plastic surgeons. Molded by his perfectionist tendencies, Frank was a man with a plan. The members of the Roslyn community were merely pawns for him to live a double….well, triple secret life that included multiple properties, Concord jet flights across the world for two people, even when he had reported that he attended such conferences or recruiting rips alone were all paid for unsuspectedly with his taxpayer’s money.
Unfortunately, Frank’s indiscretions come into play in the film’s second half and, thus, don’t allow us to see the swindling con man that he proves to be. Finley was remarkably purposeful in leading us in this direction. He was the perfect foil for Janney’s Pam, who was much more frivolous with scandalous spending, using the school’s credit card as her debit card. In one scene, she tells her niece (also employed by the district) to pay for a PlayStation on a credit card and not worry about it. It wasn’t the first time the two had engaged in this conversation. Jenny takes her aunt’s offer further on this particular occasion and purchases $2000 worth of clothes from two different department stores. However, the credit cards her oldest son, James, uses start to draw suspicion. He almost empties multiple Ace Hardware stores in nearby cities in a single day, purchasing truckloads of supplies to renovate his house.
Meanwhile, a student reporter from the school newspaper has been asked by her editor to do a fluff piece on the seven-million-dollar skywalk, a project that will create an outdoor bridge between two high school buildings. When researching the bids put towards the project, Rachel noticed a leaky ceiling in the room that held the school records. It draws suspicion. How can the district afford such a luxurious item as a skywalk if a leaky roof needs to be addressed first? Her fluff piece soon becomes a full investigative story as she attempts to secure a paper trail of bids, purchase orders, expense reports, and receipts that she now believes have been either falsified, never existed, or destroyed.
The suspicious activity on Pam’s credit cards, Rachel’s investigative reporting into the school’s bookkeeping, and an unaccounted sum of $220,000 that has been funneled out of the school budget soon cause Frank, Bob, other School Board members, and a host of others who would be hurt by this information to realize that they need to come up with an explanation for all that is happening. Pam becomes the scapegoat. She is removed from her position and has her administrative teaching license revoked. What Janney does so well is that she convinces herself, her family and even us in the process that her breaking both the law and the trust of those who put her in her position of authority was justified because these small acts of distrust were immersable compared to all of the good that she brought back to the community. As poor as Pam looks, this differs from what we will soon learn about Frank.
The top five career performances from Jackman and Janney are upstaged only by Finley’s guided storytelling. Engaging from the film’s opening shots, The director takes us on an enjoyable ride with plenty of ups and downs but never loses focus or leaves us stranded. At the same time, we don’t genuinely care what comes next for Frank and Pam. Rachel, Bob, Kyle ( one of Frank’s former students, who had not mentioned in this review), and others, we are still interested in their stories. What I mean is we don’t care what happens, but we do want to know.
I would have missed seeing Bad Education entirely had it not been suggested on one of my streaming services. As a result, I would have missed one of the better biopics of the last decades. Let my happenstance be your gain.
Plot 9.5/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 9/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 9.5/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
90.5%
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