Forget Mrs. Tingle. I wish that someone would teach Kevin Williamson a thing or two about what we want from the movies. Williamson's hit-and-miss writing has given us everything from Scream to conventional horror movies (like I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Faculty of the type that Scream so cleverly spoofed.

Now with Teaching Mrs. Tingle, Williamson gets the chance to direct one of his own scripts, in this case, a sloppy, pointless but oh-so-attractive-seeming story about some high school kids who teach world's all time bitchiest history teacher a lesson. I guess what I hoped for from a movie like this would be something like the wit of the children's book Miss Nelson is Missing, in which the world's nicest teacher teaches her rowdy kids a lesson by posing as the mean, insufferable substitute teacher Mrs. Swamp. Nothing of the sort.

Here we have Leigh Ann, a cute, but unconvincingly brainy girl played by Katie Holmes, who doesn't look an ounce of her status as second smartest girl in the school. She's earnest enough, but there doesn't seem to be much going on behind those bright Bambi eyes. Her version of intelligence means waiting an extra thirty seconds to think about the alternatives before making the worst decision in any given situation.

Leigh Ann strives to be high-school valedictorian since the school awards a scholarship to the student graduating first in the class. A scholarship would enable Leigh Ann to rise above her modest roots and pursue college life over busing tables at a local diner (her mother's lot in life). Currently holding first place is Trudie Tucker (Liz Stauber), a girl who is supposed to remind you that, yes, there were people smarter than you in high school, but they were inferior in their own ways. Trudie, in fact, resembles no one living or dead in any convincing fashion. She's a rich shoe-in for Harvard who doesn't need the money but enjoys being the winner and relishes watching poor Leigh Ann squirm in second place.

Which means we want to see her die, right? At least Kevin Williamson thinks so, and that's more or less the style of intellect required to throw together a disgusting mess like this.

The real meat here is teachers. We all hate teachers, right? Especially teachers like Mrs. Tingle because, like Mrs. Tingle, all teachers hate students and want to see them fail. Teachers are so evil that they are willing to accept the lowest salaries of anyone on earth just to allow the misery of their own schooling to stagnate among future generations. Whatever.

This is the kind of mentality that serves no real purpose other than to aggravate those pipe-bomb building students at your local high school.

So let's take another approach. Mrs. Tingle is not real, is not supposed to resemble any teacher you've ever had, but could. This is who your worst teacher could be: spawn of Satan. Mrs. Tingle is a teacher who doesn't recognize good work when she sees it, apparently, and is happy to give a C to a project that pure little Leigh Ann (she has voluntarily constructed her wardrobe of outfits that look like Catholic-school uniforms) spent the past six months putting together.

And who remembers why or even cares, but Mrs. Tingle catches Katie Holmes doing something that appears to be cheating, throwing her aspirations for valedictory success awry. When Katie and friends, including Jo Lynn (Marisa Coughlan), played as an aspiring actress by an actress who is even worse at acting than her bad-acting character is supposed to be, and Luke (Barry Watson), who appears to be a second-generation Johnny Depp knockoff, a Neanderthal who looks like Skeet Ulrich who looks like Johnny Depp.

Our three heroes (should we call them that?) clomp over to Mrs. Tingle's house to confront her about the incident and, beforeyaknowit, Neanderthal picks up a handy crossbow, pandemonium ensues and Mrs. Tingle ends up strapped to her own bed. Here's where brainy Leigh Ann decides it might be a good idea to try to "convince" Mrs. Tingle to reason with them. Now Mrs. Tingle may be mean, but she is not stupid, which makes her, especially given that she's played with confident nastiness by Helen Mirren, a worthy villain for this movie.

Unfortunately, this is a case of having a worthy villain without a worthy story or worthy heroes. Instead, Williamson gives us three high-school kids who, between them, don't have enough wits to match Mrs. Tingle. Still ahead are additional moments of teacher humiliation supplied by a coach who (skip to the next paragraph if you want to keep the surprise) seems to have been having a twisted affair with Mrs. Tingle and goes by the love nickname of "Spanky."

But before we get to the pitiful end, we have to sit through all sorts of Kevin Williamson ridiculousness. This is the kind of stuff that worked pretty well in Scream but fails miserably here. Take for instance a dumb and inappropriately placed scene in which Jo Lynn, assigned to watch her victim and bored by the fact that Mrs. Tingle doesn't have a television in the house, reenacts an entire scene from The Exorcist at the base of Tingle's bed.

Sprinkled with moments of occasional amusement (you might enjoy an appearance by Molly Ringwald as a substitute teacher whose passion for passionate romance novels translates directly into a series of spicy history lessons), Teaching Mrs. Tingle can't justify the poor treatment it gives to such a volatile and touchy subject. Like Apt Pupil, which mistook a story about Nazi war crimes for "juicy" film fodder, there's nothing here to warrant the film's shallow teacher-bashing.

All of this only to lead up to Mrs. Tingle's admission that, indeed, she only wants Leigh Ann to fail? Who really cares? Does anyone know a teacher like this? And if you do, does it really take actions this drastic before the administration catches on or has an excuse to fire the offender?

The only thing really of note in this film is Helen Mirren's performance as she vamps it up as a sophisticated and sadisticated bitter high school history teacher about whom we never learn why she behaves the way she does. Not that such things matter in a movie that wants to approach academics like some kind of beauty pageant. Which means, of course, that Leigh Ann will somehow cash this unresolvable situation in for her cash prize. Go figure.