Bad Teacher review. Starring Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel.
It’s as if the makers of Bad Teacher were taking a standardized test full of multiple choice questions. They didn’t know for sure everything that needed to go into a raunchy but good comedy, so they took their Number 2 pencils, took a chance and filled in the blanks as best they could.
Sometimes they hit on the right answers, sometimes they didn’t.
Director Jake Kasdan’s bad teacher is Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz), a gold-digging, vain woman who took a teaching job to get shorter hours and summers off. She’s not really counting on having to do it long – she’s hooked her claws into a rich guy and at the end of one school year, she happily quits to start planning her wedding. But he sees through her, and Ms. Halsey ends up teaching again in the fall. Biding her time until another summer off, she has two missions: get her claws into the rich and impressionable substitute teacher (Diaz’s real-life ex Justin Timberlake) and most importantly to her – come up with the money to get a boob job.
Along the way, she stirs up trouble in comedic situations that are hit or miss. It’s funny to watch Ms. Halsey just pop in a DVD set in a classroom (Lean On Me, et. al.) and think that covers her teaching requirements. It’s a kick to have her take the class to the gym and bean them with dodgeballs if they get an answer wrong. And sometimes a well-placed dirty joke hits just the right shocking note (like what Elizabeth’s pro athlete dates do with condoms when they’re done). Other times the dirty jokes are too forced and not all that clever (we’ve seen gym teacher/lesbian jokes before, and we certainly don’t need to see a junior high boy’s bulge when he’s aroused).
Diaz and Kasdan make the most of Diaz’s hot factor, whether it’s constant references to her hot body or an extended car wash scene. Men are like deer stuck in the headlights around her, sometimes comedically, sometimes unbelievably. Most unbelievable is Jason Segel as the gym teacher she won’t date because of his pay grade. His underdeveloped character seems savvy enough to see right through Elizabeth, yet he continues to ask her out all school year.
The most underdeveloped characters though are the kids. We can assume Ms. Halsey is a bad teacher – it’s the title of the movie and good teachers don’t smoke weed in their cars outside school – but we don’t really know it because we don’t really see the effect she may be having on the kids. Oh, we see some jaws dropped, but they don’t do much else. It’s a running joke that she doesn’t know her students’ names, but you know what? Neither do we.
Bad Teacher is more about Elizabeth’s relationships with the other teachers, though, and some of them really shine. Timberlake continues to prove he’s a funny guy. Lucy Punch is very good as Elizabeth’s “hall buddy” in a nearby classroom – she’s a Ned Flanders to Elizabeth’s Homer Simpson. And Phyllis Smith (The Office’s Phyllis) gets to be different from her TV role and be more naïve and giddy than fans have seen.
The end of the movie is way too rushed. Lead characters have turning points and epiphanies that come out of nowhere, and we’re suddenly asked to believe things about them that we wouldn’t have before. It’s as if the scriptwriters were taking an essay test and didn’t know how to wrap it up. Their good teachers should have taught them it’s not good writing to just sum things up with a quick closing sentence that starts with “In conclusion…”