I have to admit, I laughed a few times during this movie. Some of the punch lines were funny. Which ones they were I don’t remember. I didn’t write them down. However, a few laughs don’t make a film funny and they certainly don’t make a film good. I know this because I laughed while watching Bad Teacher and Bad Teacher is not a good film.
Cameron Diaz stars as the shallow gold digger Elizabeth Halsey, a middle school teacher who has just resigned after one year teaching to get married to her rich fiance. But wait, cue the record scratch. He’s dumping her. Rut-ro. Back to John Adams Middle School (or JAMS as it is frustratingly drilled into our head throughout) where her goal now appears to be to play movies for her class, drink and smoke weed all day and every day. Oh, ho, ho, she’s such a baaaaaad teacher!
She has also determined that in order to land her next sugar daddy she is going to need a breast enlargement. In fact, instead of calling this film Bad Teacher it should have been called Idiot Wants a Boob Job or some variation, since that’s pretty much the crux of the thing. Elizabeth’s dream of massive mammaries is intensified when she targets Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), a substitute teacher loaded with family money and a personality as dimwitted as Elizabeth is slimy.
Add Russell, the equally doltish, self-hating gym teacher played by Jason Segel and Amy Squirrel, the “teacher of the year” type across the hall played by Lucy Punch (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) and you pretty much have your plot, or what is supposed to resemble a plot. Russell wants Elizabeth, Amy hates Elizabeth, Amy likes Scott, Scott likes Amy and Elizabeth hates Amy, wants Scott and believes she needs big breasts to get him… because she’s an idiot.
I understand director Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) is going for a dark comedy here, but outside of Elizabeth being just a stupid and mean-spirited person the darkness doesn’t come through. She isn’t so evil that you want to see her wreck havoc on the lives of those around her as much as you just don’t like her. It also doesn’t help that none of the supporting characters are likable either. Segel’s Russell is just asking for it, Scott is a creepy fool and Amy is overbearing and has some serious issues of her own. Why should I care one way or another what happens to these people, be it good or bad? I don’t.
Okay, I will admit Punch is pretty good as Amy until she becomes too much to handle toward the end and Phyllis Smith as the by-the-book teacher Lynn, I also enjoyed. However, I still want to know what happened to Lynn after she got high with Liz and Russell and why that scene doesn’t exist. Much of this film felt like a series of alternate takes, pieced together with a mind for punch lines, which led to a fractured story, abandoned scenes and a shoddy story altogether. The trailer alone includes scenes not in the movie and alternate takes of others. I can only wonder how they managed to decide on one scene over another as scattered as it all seems.
Then there’s Diaz. Yikes. This isn’t a performance and she isn’t funny. Instead it is a lamb being led to the slaughter. The only way I could have found this film enjoyable would have been if a school bus hit her in the first five minutes and the rest of the film played out with the cast pretending she was still there. Come to think of it, that would have been amazing! A+ for that!
At only 92 minutes this film is long in the same way a bad episode of “Saturday Night Live” is long. It’s one bad skit after another with a few chuckles here and there. Unfortunately you don’t have it saved to DVR so you can’t fast forward over the bad parts.
Does the fact I laughed a few times mean this film is better than I actually perceived it to be? I can’t justify giving a film a higher appraisal based on some well-timed but forgotten punch lines and a couple of characters I found tolerable. While it’s not an entire failure, it’s pretty damn close as there is no substitute for a poorly designed story.
