“BAD APPLES”

It’s the universal experience of every teacher that at some point in their career, they will have had to deal with that one pupil who puts them through the ringer. It’s an inevitable right of passage that even the sweetest of educators will cross paths with a child of that pedigree. My mother, who has been teaching for most of her adult life, has had her fair share of them. The truth is not every child is the same. Countless factors contribute to what makes these children lash out in such a way that it becomes a real problem, disrupting the harmony every educator wishes to establish. But what if that problem child simply disappeared? That’s at the heart of Jonatan Etzler’s satirical dramedy “Bad Apples.” A film that far more relishes in the situational comedy of it all than digging into the questions it so curiously props up.

From its opening moments, “Bad Apples” proudly wears its unsubtle metaphor on its sleeve as audiences see the titular fruit being processed at a plant where a shoe is mixed in with the bunch, slowly causing the entire system to malfunction. The shoe was thrown in by troublemaking delinquent Danny, played by Eddie Waller, the only student who is keeping Saoirse Ronan’s Maria from being the teacher she knows she can be. Her students are struggling, parents are frustrated with her, and even members of the faculty believe that she is ill-suited for the job. Danny’s actions only continue to worsen, even leading to harm against another one of Maria’s students.

In a moment of desperation, Maria’s attempt to fix the problem beyond the school grounds spirals her into a miscalculation that she fears will ruin her life. What begins as a panic about the ramifications of her actions slowly dissipates as she begins to notice an unsettling revelation that the removal of said bad apple is what everyone really needed in the first place. Jess O’Kane’s screenplay is an adaptation that takes an overall intellectually playful concept from its source material and doesn’t truly add much to it. “Bad Apples” wants to point out the hypocrisy of communities that would rather squash said issues in the preservation of societal structures we’re so perfectly bending a knee towards. Instead, it builds to a somewhat preposterous (albeit humorous) outcome that doesn’t contain the impact it needs to hammer the point in.

The satire doesn’t cut deep, having no bite whatsoever and setting up punchlines that rarely land. Etzler’s direction helps to bring some type of levity to balance it all, but it only makes for a film far more sterile than it aspires to be. Ronan, as well, isn’t particularly at the height of her powers despite delivering a performance that attempts to show the totality of emotions teachers feel for their students, both good and bad. There’s sadness rooted deep in Maria as she’s wrestling with the morality of the decision she’s made. A decision that not only helps her life, but also causes her a great deal of mental distress. Her chemistry with Waller is where the film works best, cracking a dynamic of the teacher who cares too much versus the student whose rotten persona is a shell for the pain in his heart. Waller is terrific, selling how much of a nuisance Danny could be to the point where even audiences wonder if this child is a lost cause. Etzler, at least, can thematically wrangle with those emotions and spotlight that, at the end of the day, Danny is just a child.

Nia Brown’s Pauline is also an interesting factor that throws a loop into Maria’s plan, even if it feels like it’s an additional element needed to give some spice to a story that already showed its cards a bit early in its already minimal runtime. It’s a shame Jacob Anderson isn’t as prominent in the film, considering how talented a performer he is. Anderson’s administrative assistant, Sam’s a romantic past with Maria is glossed over, and the relationship between the two is only an afterthought. He does the best regardless of the character of Sam being a thankless role.

As a whole, “Bad Apples” occasionally brings some laughs, but it leaves little to ruminate on after. If Ronan and Waller weren’t as good as they are, bringing a dynamic that has some interesting evolutions, then there would be a lot less to present here. A shame that when the film starts finding itself, it immediately ends.