Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch
Synopsis: Elizabeth (Diaz) is a bad teacher – frankly she is just killing time until she marries her sugar daddy and can live out the rest of her days in the lazy lap of luxury. Unfortunately her fiancée (an his mother) are on to her. The wedding is off and it’s splitsville, leaving Elizabeth with no choice but to go back to her teaching job. Realising that big fake titties are the way into a mans wallet she sets about earning the cash to win over Timberlake’s substitute teacher and his families riches – but maybe this teacher has a few lessons to learn?
On the way to the screening of BAD TEACHER, THN was planning the ultimate faux-par of movie reviewing – the foregone conclusion! So confident that the film would suck we’d already penned our witty two word review…Bad Movie. Unfortunately BAD TEACHER wasn’t bad, saying that it wasn’t good either. A for effort but C for achievement.
BAD TEACHER is written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, the driving force behind the American Office and as such the film is full of deadpan humour and subtle details that are absolutely brilliant. The problem is that the script, actors and action are constantly straying into more obvious overt gags that would be more at home in a Farrelly Bros’ movie and so it never really gels. It takes some exquisite details and overcooks them, take Principle Snur’s (played by the excellent John Michael Higgins) obsession with dolphins – such a perfect lame and character defining point, but it’s taken to a limit that’s caricature. Similarly Diaz’s titular bad teacher is so ridiculously unpleasant that it’s impossible to believe that there could be anybody so intentionally vicious, selfish and belligerent, from this comes the more important point she’s a very hard protagonist to like!
Sadly Diaz is rarely funny or sexy in Bad Teacher
Despite the films indecision to play it straight or to go full-on slap-stick, both elements provide some great laughs. The more overblown toilet scene has a perfect punch line (definitely the audiences biggest laugh) and J.T. and Diaz’s denim dry humping session is cringe-tastically hilarious. The observational stereotypes of faculty members are brilliant, particularly Sandy and Miss Pavicic. Lucy Punch plays the goody-goody teacher Ms Squirrel to perfection and will undoubtedly land some bigger roles off the back of this – even Justin Timberlake works as the super good looking but actually lame duck love interest and his solo performance of his love song is a movie high-light.
The film’s plot and motivations are a pretty standard affair and once all the characters are in place you’d have to be a moron not to see what is going to happen. A movie rarity BAD TEACHER actually drags through the first half as it over-bakes the ‘bad teacher’ shtick – and overplays the ‘fake-tits’ joke. Once the main plot device (a $5700 award for best teacher which will pay for said fake tits) is introduced you’ve just about given up expecting a point. However the film pulls its socks up and hits harder and more often with the laughs no small contribution from Reno 911’s Thomas Lennon.
Diaz a little undeserving of nice guy Segel
Although it seems a little ‘Heat Magazine’ to critique an actresses appearance it’s hard to ignore that Diaz has lost the lustre of her formative years – looking like a rubber faced version of Heath Ledger’s Joker (sans the mouth scars). She is probably also the weakest member of the cast. Ultimately nice girl Diaz just isn’t believable in such an unlikable role, and her A-list presence is too big for the subtleties of the scripting and characterisation. There is also a jarring reality with her onscreen relationship with gym teacher Russel Gettis played by Jason Segel. Segel is endearingly sweet throughout the movie as the nice guy that Diaz should so clearly be with. When they finally get it together, Diaz has been such a bitch throughout that you kind of feel like she doesn’t really deserve him or the happy ending.
BAD TEACHER is a weird one, it blends low-key idiosyncratic observations and Indie movie feel with an absurd lead character of Anchor Man proportions. Ultimately the film reaches for obvious gags and never quite nails them. Its real genius is in the performances of the sideline characters tucked in here and there easily providing the bulk of sustained chortles. After a faltering start BAD TEACHER does just enough in the last half to have you leaving the cinema thinking its averagely enjoyable. Fun but forgettable.
BAD TEACHER hits the UK 17th June.
Our friends at LOVEFiLM have a huge back catalogue including BAD TEACHER, available to pre-order or reserve, and you can also now watch movies online as well as rent them.
