Bad Teacher
Bad teacher? Yep. Cameron Diaz's Elizabeth Halsey is indeed a bad teacher. (And Diaz is a bad actress so I guess this fits.) Bad movie? Oh yeah. Terrible. There were a few sequences and one-liners that managed to induce a few chuckles. Barely. But beyond that, and Jason Segel's pointless effort to class up the joint a bit (with his acting, that is... the script left no room for class...which I guess is to be expected) the movie had virtually nothing really going for it. Ten, fifteen years ago? This might have been hilarious. But the fact is, this movie's been done before. Maybe not the exact details of the script, but the basic premise. Diaz's Halsey is a materialistic bitch who is only working as a teacher until she can find a rich husband to take care of her. She thinks she finds him in Justin Timberlake's shallow weirdo Scott Delacorte- the school's new substitute teacher...who comes from a moneyed background. Of course there's also Segel's gym teacher with a heart of... silver?, Russell Gettis, who has the hots for Halsey, but not the cash. Add in Lucy Punch's weirdo zealot teacher to compete with Halsey for Delacorte, and the associated complications that ensue from that and you have the basic plot. Add some tired, raunchy jokes - much too much emphasis on, "Yeah, we went there" type humor- and you have the movie in a nutshell. You excited to see it? Probably not. I sure wasn't excited to HAVE seen it by the time I got through.
I could spend the next three minutes going on and on about why the movie sucked and how offensive it was to certain people... namely teachers. But then I realized that I'm just taking it all too seriously. Yes, Halsey does some shitty stuff in the movie and yeah, she largely gets away with it. Should I have a problem with that? Ehhh.... maybe, but then if I did I'd probably be taking the damn thing too seriously. Should I have a problem with how they depict teachers in the movie? (The only pseudo-normal one is Segel's Gettis.. everyone else is neurotic... at best). Probably should just let that slide.. chock it up to close-minded filmmakers (Director Jake Kasden and company). What I suppose bothers me more is how lazy it all is. They reduce every character- with the exception of Segel's Russell Gettis- to a very broad caricatures. Annoyingly broad caricatures. One note to the extreme. But, the thing is, with a little effort, they could have injected some depth to the characters. Even a little would have made the movie seem less tired... and maybe even less dated. Kasden and crew make Halsey out to be such a megabitch that no one really should care or root for her inevitable final act moment of clarity/change of heart. By the end, everyone had proven to be such horrid or annoying people that I was kind of rooting for the way out of left field ending of a sink hole swallowing the entire school on a teacher workshop day. Use some creativity people! Everyone could see where the movie was going. Nothing new was offered and to make matters worse the characters were so awful that no one really cared how the thing got to its inevitable end.
So, it has that going for it. Look, I'm not saying it was the worst movie I've seen this year. It was pretty terrible, but I fully expect Michael Bay to unveil another genuine piece of shit in Transformers 3. I guess what is so bothersome about it is that the filmmakers just didn't seem to try. Mean for mean's sake? Yeah, occasionally funny- not often- but it's been done so. many. times. before. Raunch? Been there done that. One note to the extreme characters/collection of nutty characters? Old news. There just wasn't much effort. The movie had talent. Justin Timberlake is one hell of an entertainer (his role here called for too much.. ummm.. overacting, and he delivered there). Jason Segel is cash money. Lucy Punch probably has had better days or is at least capable of having better days. Cameron Diaz? Eh, she has her appeal, I suppose. (It looked like her sincere scenes here caused her immense pain...I don't mean the pain caused by her character's revelation that she's just a horrible person... it seemed like anything outside of sugary sweet or super bitch caused her pain... that's just not good acting.) So I suppose the seeds were there to have a passable/somewhat entertaining flick. I would say that it was a swing and a miss of a movie. The problem there is that they would have to swing... and that takes more effort than any of the creative team seemed to afford the movie. No, this movie struck out looking... never even trying to take its bat off its shoulder.
Grade: D
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