Bad Teacher (2011)

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch

Directed by: Jake Kadsen

Written by: Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky

Duration: 1hr 32 mins

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Here's an odd case:  a movie that borrows the concept of another movie (typically trusted/good natured figure behaving badly) and switches the profession and gender.  Bad Teacher is in no way related to the hilarious Bad Santa, but nevertheless has the good grace to acknowledge its debt to the 2003 film via its familiar title.  That gives credit in my book, but dignity alone isn’t quite enough to save an ultimately disappointing comedy.

BAD... OR, AT LEAST, INADEQUATE

Of course, Terry Zwigoff’s dark masterpiece is an unrealistic bar to reach, and unlike some cases, the relationship to an earlier movie does not directly hamper ones enjoyment.  Sure, its idea is no longer original, but it’s still a good ‘un (the film makers may have also been inspired by the heavy-drinking, -smoking, -swearing educators in the Channel 4 comedy/drama series Teachers – unsuccessfully ported to the US in 2006).

 

MY, WHAT AN APPEALING WOMAN

So where does Bad Teacher fall short?  Something Bad Santa does well is make an unlikable protagonist sympathetic.  Willie, the heavy-drinking, foul-mouthed, antisocial antihero, is a loser, but ultimately a pitiful and harmless (except to himself) individual who’s been beaten up by life.  Bad Teacher, on the other hand, centres around Cameron Diaz’s Elizabeth Halsey, a selfish, shallow junior high teacher.   She turns up to class hungover, puts on movies every lesson, doesn’t know the students’ names, that sort of thing.  Lord knows how she successfully got through her training to become qualified in the first place.  Anyway, Halsey’s mission in life is to marry a rich man who will provide for her every whim, a plan that’s working out fine until her meal-ticket fiancée comes to his senses and leaves her.  Dejected, she soon finds an alternate target in Scott (Justin Timberlake), the new cover teacher and heir of a men’s watches empire. 
 

But to snare her new benefactor, she decides she needs to get her breasts enlarged to maximise her appeal, and so starts raising the funds by scamming the school and parents out of money in any way she can.  When the film eventually runs out of steam with that angle, it introduces a new plot development:  a competition with a convenient cash prize for the teacher whose class gets the best scores in the state, and so Halsey changes tact and for the rest of the duration the laughs are wrung out of her struggles to suddenly become the model teacher.

UGH, JUST GIVE IT UP, LOVE...

There are two main problems with this film, the biggest being Diaz herself.  All the men fancy her, despite her being thoroughly unpleasant – and on a personal level, I don’t find the woman to be particularly attractive, so when she repeatedly gets what she wants through manipulating a succession of salivating males, I found there very little to relate to.  Seeing Jason Seagal’s likable gym teacher embarrass himself by fawning all over her is just cringe-worthy.  This is just personal taste, sure (what isn’t?), but since so much of Bad Teacher hinges on Diaz’s appeal, the film can’t help but fall flat if the viewer doesn’t buy into it.  Talking of flat, the idea that having her breasts ‘enhanced’ into immobile silicone orbs will increase her attractiveness is also not something I go along with, either.  

Diaz doesn’t have the charm to pull off her worst behaviour, antics that include forcing drugs onto her butter-wouldn’t-melt middle-aged co-worker  (“Just fucking do it, weed is awesome!”);  critically assessing the youngster under her charge as ‘losers’, ‘freaks’ and so on; and stealing the proceeds from the school’s charity carwash – and her entry to the annuls of cinematic auto-sudding scenes (Cool Hand Luke, Wild Things, One Night At McColls) is anti-climatic, too, Tony Scott-style magic hour lighting and excessive slow motion substituting genuine sexiness.  

MEH...

The film also insists on laying on awful plinky-plunky Desperate Housewives-style piano cues for whenever Diaz is being manipulative, completely diluting the intended deliciousness of her scheming.

The second problem is that too much of the humour revolves around sourpuss Halsey being surrounded by extremely perky and jolly characters, so Diaz can pull a variety of unimpressed faces.  Fair enough, it’s an amusing enough concept.  But after the same routine has been repeated over and over, all we’re really left with is a film made up of annoying, over-enthusiastic jobsworths and do-gooders, with Diaz in the middle (the game Segel is the exception, but he is so under-used it’s a wonder he even bothered turning up).

RIVERS WILL BE CRIED

Timberlake does well with his anti-sex symbol role, going as far from his 'sexy back' image as imaginable and showing an admirable self-irony; coupled with his solid work in The Social Network, JT looks to be making a successful singer-to-actor transition.  There’s also a good running gag where Segel takes advantage of Timberlake’s earnestness, especially in a scene at a museum where he keeps contradicting himself and Timberlake’s flaccid Scott blindly keeps on agreeing.

AN ANNOYING CHARACTER MADE BEARABLE (JUST)

But it's Judy Punch, as the earnest ‘friend across the hall’ Miss Squirrel, who is by far the best thing in the film, effectively playing the story's antagonist – although with a lead as unpleasant as Diaz, I ended up siding with her.  She goes from do-gooder to Halsey’s nemesis, seeking to foil her colleague’s increasingly erratic scams and prevent her from stealing Timberlake from under her nose.  Punch – a familiar face on British TV and now making waves Stateside – does solid comic work throughout, and that she shines despite being saddled with the most annoying of all the annoying characters is to her infinite credit.

To be fair, Bad Teacher does avoid the temptation to give Halsey a full turnaround to remorseful sainthood, which would have been too much.  We don’t want to see a neat, comfortable character arc; we just want it to be worth spending an hour and a half of our time in her company.  Sadly, it isn’t.  **1/2