Movie Review: Bad Teacher
Bad Teacher was not a bad movie. Not brilliant, or even consistently funny, but it had it’s moments and was at the least entertaining.
Before I get into this I should mention that, due to some seriously crossed wires in my head, nothing fills my mind with senseless violence like dance clubs. If you see me hanging out while other people are dancing to beat heavy bass music you can rest assured that my mind is playing a medley of violence and mayhem that would make John Woo turn pale. I have never acted on this sort of thing, and the last fight I was in was back in 7th grade (ironically, the same grade that this movie was about.
Why am I mentioning this? Because the second thing that fills my mind with repressed childhood violence is anything involving school. I just keep flashing back to all the abuse I suffered as a kid and teenager and start to see blood. So you can image what happens when I see a movie that involves some kind of school dance, as this one does. In high school I went to exactly two dances and regretted both of them.
The funny thing is, if I go to a dance club and actually start dancing I have a great time and forget about all that stuff. But if I am doing my usual wallflower routine, in my head is total chaos.
The movie. Cameron Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, a vain, shallow, self centered, foul mouthed middle school teacher who is also an alcoholic and pot user. There is no attempt to explain how she became a teacher or even graduated college, but there it is. She start off engaged to a rich guy who dumps her for determining (correctly) that she is a gold digger. In a move guaranteed to advance women’s advocacy and liberation, she decides she needs to find another rich guy and the way to do that is to get a boob job (did I say advance? I meant to say retard). Fortunately she works at a school that doesn’t seem to have any kind of teaching standards or ability to perceive a bad apple. She gets hit on by the gym teacher (Jason Segel, from How I Met Your Mother) and dumps him flat out in a scene that could only be crueler if she actually castrated him while doing it. Cruel and selfish are the watchwords for her, and while it occasionally generates some funny moments or lines, after about an hour it starts to wear thin. I mean, at some point you have to give us SOME reason to like her besides the fact that she is hot and witty. During the course of the movie she smokes pot on school property, steals test answers, blackmails a guy, ruins the career of the only truly dedicated and giving teacher in the film (Lucy Punch, who is actually super hot if you like red heads), purposely destroys a relationship, denigrates and humiliates her students, steals, lies, manipulates, and drinks. If she were a male you would assume she were the antagonist, not the protagonist. She has a couple moments towards the end where she turns it around, and sort of follows an arc, but the arc actually feels like a straight line that suddenly makes an illegal u-turn in front of four lanes of oncoming traffic.
Anyway, she is added by straight woman Phyllis Smith (from the Office, one of my favorite shows. Dunder Miflin shirt courtesy of the TV show t shirts) in her quest to score the hot (if you like weedy) new sub Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), who in spite of being a low paid teacher comes from some kind of super rich family, a fact that Halsey spots like a vulture spotting a dying rabbit from 1,000 feet up. He starts out like a cool and sincere guy, but as the movie progresses turns out to be weirder and weirder. Middle school teaching hijinks ensues. Kids get hit in the face with balls. Some Guy Ritchie-esque plot twists occur. Horrible people fail to get their comeuppance, while (relatively) innocent people suffer bad consequences.
The stars. One star for the adult acting, although really I think it is just good casting. Is it really that much of a stretch for Cameron Diaz to play a vapid, shallow, gold digging bitch (not that I know anything about her personally. It just seems like a movie role she is really comfortable with)? Or for Jason Segel a sarcastic gym teacher and Phyllis Smith a timid nobody? Honestly, the best actor in this was Justin Timberlake, as much as it galls me to say it. One star. I am going to give a separate star for the kid actors. What has been happening lately where kids all learned how to act? It started with Super 8 and seems to be continuing. One star. The movie did make me laugh multiple times. On star. Pacing was really good, given that the movie stretched over the course of an entire school year. One star. All of the supporting characters were good and added something to the movie. None of them felt like wasted film. One star. Cameron Diaz and Lucy Punch were both pretty hot, although Diaz got the better outfits. One star. There was possibly the most gratuitous nude scene of all time that bordered into implied lesbianism. One star. Dialog was witty and very funny. One star. In spite of the horrible nature of Diaz’s character I did find myself identifying with her and ultimately rooting for her. One star. Total: nine stars.
Now the black holes. The horrific nature of Diaz’s character really ground on me after a while, and kind of made me afraid to ever date a woman again. One black hole. No attempt to even give a reason why she became a teacher or why any school with any kind of standards would hire her. One black hole. The plot is predictable with a capital P. One black hole. Some moments you were laughing, other moments you were cringing into your seat hoping the last joke or scene would be washed from your memory. One black hole. The ‘change of heart’ Halsey goes through in the last ten minutes felt less like a story arc and more like her body snatchers pod finally ripened and her replacement clone had arrived. One black hole. Some minor plot issues on the order of “Why would they put up with that crap?”. One black hole. Total: six black holes.
That whole “School dances make me go berserk” thing I could have given a black hole to, but I think that is my own personal issue, not shared by a lot of you. I also found irksome the fact that a super rich, super hot (apparently) guy would even want to be a teacher.
Anyway, three stars total. Worth seeing on NetFlix, I guess. Not a good date movie, in spite of it being more or less a chick flick, as your date will assume (probably correctly) that you have a thing for Cameron Diaz and that is the only reason you are going. Of course, you could retort with the idea that she is only there for Justin Timberlake, but trust me when I say there is no winning that argument.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.