14 DAY TRIAL // It’s a well-known fact that Cameron Diaz can do comedy, so she seems like the perfect choice for the raunchy, foul-mouthed, pot-smoking, constantly drunk but always impeccably stylish Elizabeth Halsey from “Bad Teacher.” Unfortunately, she’s working against a very mediocre script.
The rom-com, meant to be at least as subversive as 2003’s “Bad Santa” but failing at it, is directed by Jake Kasdan (“Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”) on a script by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, who have some pretty decent hits under their belt.
Despite the impressive cast, which, on its own, could have probably delivered this summer’s nastiest and funniest comedy, “Bad Teacher” falls short for being too forced, clichéd and, at times, just downright not funny.
Elizabeth is a gold-digger. Dumped by her rich fiancé just before the wedding because she spent a small fortune in just a month, she returns to teaching in a middle-school in Illinois – a temporary thing, until she finds another sugar daddy to make of her, hopefully, a trophy wife.
Clearly, she “doesn’t give an F” about the whole teaching thing, let alone about the kids she’s supposed to help grow and develop into smarter, more educated adults.
Her first day of school starts with her placing her Louboutin boots on the desk, popping a movie for the kids to see for the entire class, and sleeping off whatever it was that got her intoxicated the night before.
When she lays eyes on preppy-looking Scott Delacorte (real-life ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake) and she learns that he actually comes from a very wealthy family, she knows whom she will be wooing for the next months, no matter the cost of said wooing.
This turns out to be more that she can afford from her teacher salary: Delacorte’s ex had ginormous breasts, so Elizabeth concludes that, if she wants to go up to a 10 (she rates herself as a 8.5) and land herself a man, she’d better get $10,000 pronto for surgery.
Determined to make it happen, she schemes, embezzles from the school fund, steals a standard test to land a bonus and is being twice as mean and selfish as she normally is.
She does have moments when her inner kindness – that no one but fellow teacher Russell Gettis (Jason Segel) sees underneath all that trash-talking – shines through. In the end, though, it doesn’t redeem her.
Diaz makes for a breathtaking bad teacher. She’s hot, but not in a very self-conscious way, uses her attractiveness like she would a machine gun on the combat field, is merciless, self-centered and completely uninterested in anything else but her one goal: bigger breasts.
The supporting cast is just as good. Segel steals the show with his portrayal of a sarcastic but apparently low-key gym teacher, while Timberlake puts on quite a performance as a geeky, shallow and often times annoying math teacher.
Lucy Punch takes what could have been a one-note Amy Squirrel and turns her into a real, multidimensional character, who oscillates from annoyingly nice to downright creepy.
Phyllis Smith is equally believable as the shy Lynn Davies, who can never seem to get enough of watching Elizabeth being unruly and totally disrespectful of the higher authority in school.
Again, with such a strong cast, it’s a wonder that “Bad Teacher” didn’t turn out better, critics note, pointing out the poor script and awkward editing as responsible for this.
Instead of coming across as a coherent movie, “Bad Teacher” is more like a string of unrelated funny scenes, some of which only desperately strive to be so – and fail.
The plot holes are just as hard to ignore: it doesn’t seem to make that much sense to have Elizabeth teach in middle school if she wants to land a rich husband (surely, there must be better places to go to do that), just as it’s rather futile to have her sell empty containers to raise the money for breast surgery when her wardrobe is clearly packed full with Louboutins and Victoria Beckham dresses.
The ending seems forced and undeserved, especially since Elizabeth doesn’t get a proper “redemption” moment. In fact, she hardly gets a couple of qualities to make audiences root for her, save the aforementioned hotness and raunchy language.
On the same note, had this film been called simply “Bad,” it would have made more sense, since Elizabeth’s bond with her students is hardly a topic of interest with the writers.
Nevertheless, as summer comedies go, “Bad Teacher” is an entertaining way to waste time. It’s a shame to see it only if you think about how much better it could have been.
Rated R for language, nudity and some drug use, “Bad Teacher” opened in the US on June 24, will arrive in France on July 27, and ends its run in Malaysia on October 20.
