| Director | Jason Bateman |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy film |
| Runtime | 89 min |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $10 million |
| Box office | $7.8 million |
Forty-year-old misanthrope Guy Trilby discovers a loophole in the Golden Quill Spelling Bee. It stipulates that participants must have not graduated from the eighth grade, allowing him to enter since he dropped out of middle school.
Guy wins a regional spelling bee and progresses to the national competition after confrontations with the parents of children and the spelling bee hosts. He is accompanied by Jenny Widgeon, a journalist hoping to make a story out of his participation in the bee.
On the flight to the national spelling bee, Guy meets Chaitanya Chopra, a 10-year-old entrant in the bee who persistently attempts to befriend him. Upon his arrival in Los Angeles, Guy meets the director of the spelling bee, Dr. Bernice Deagan, who expresses anger at his participation in the bee and arranges for him to stay in a storage closet rather than a regular room.
When Guy learns that Chaitanya is staying in the same hotel, he takes him out to expose him to the wilder side of life. They go stealing food and drinking, and he hires a prostitute to briefly "flash" Chaitanya.
In the bee, Guy tries to distract and disconcert his fellow competitors. At one point he insinuates that he was sleeping with another contestant's mother, and another time he tricks a contestant into thinking that she has gotten her first period by placing ketchup on her chair.
Despite Dr. Deagan's tampering with the word list to give Guy the most difficult words, he spells complicated words with relative ease, impressing and angering both parents and staff at the spelling bee, including the event's founder, Dr. William Bowman. However, the parents petition for his disqualification and the resignation of Deagan.
While researching Guy's background, Jenny discovers that Bowman is Guy's father. She reveals this to him, and he admits that his prime motivation for entering the bee was to embarrass his father in revenge for abandoning him and his mother when he was a child.
Soon before the final stage of the bee, Guy overhears Chaitanya and his father discussing his strategy to win, which is to befriend Guy so that he will allow him to win out of guilt. He ends his friendship with Chaitanya, despite Chaitanya's pleas that he genuinely wanted to be friends. They later sabotage each other: Guy burns Chaitanya's study book, and Chaitanya files a false police report, accusing Guy of kidnapping a young girl.
Meanwhile, ten competitors remain in the bee, and the pool is gradually reduced to just Guy and Chaitanya. When a contestant's mother attacks Guy verbally and is subdued by the police on live television, Bowman is forced to intervene, to his embarrassment.
Having accomplished his goal, Guy decides to let Chaitanya win and deliberately misspells a word. To prove his friendship, Chaitanya also misspells his word, causing them to argue. This escalates into a physical fight, with Chaitanya kicking Guy in his groin. When Bowman attempts to intervene, Chaitanya accidentally hits him with a chair.
Although the bee is briefly halted, Bowman allows it to continue after deciding that Guy and Chaitanya acted in an equally embarrassing manner. Their standoff of deliberately misspelling words continues until Guy intentionally misspells Chaitanya's word so that he corrects him, thus causing Chaitanya to win the bee inadvertently. As Guy leaves, content, Chaitanya offers to give him half the winnings and names him co-winner of the bee.
Guy writes a note to Bowman explaining his actions, which Bowman refuses to read until he reveals himself to be his son, and returns home. He resolves his conflict with Chaitanya by buying an old police car and helping him to chase down his school bullies.