Bad Teacher (2011)

I wasn’t expecting to get back into romantic comedies so soon but this one just happened to be chosen out of the unwatched list at home. It was time to watch it since I should return it to my friend afterwards. The past weekend was CRAZY! I have a good amount of reviews to write up and its getting all backlogged.  Hopefully I’ll get it up this week.

Director: Jake Kasdan

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

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a junior high school teacher who is just has her engagement broken off from a rich man.  Her priority has always to find a rich husband and now she wants to do that by getting herself breast implants. Conveniently, as she is forced to go back to work as a junior high school teacher, she meets Scott (Justin Timberlake) who is a rich substitute teacher.  She tries to get him to notice her while pretending to be involved in the school activities and her class, when all she does is be disrespectful, inappropriate and rude.  However, when she learns that if her class can score the highest score in the state exams, she will be rewarded with a huge monetary prize, she starts changing the way she teaches.  As she is pursuing Scott, Elizabeth is being chased by the persistent gym teacher, Russell (Jason Segel).  While Scott seems to be growing more fond of another teacher, Amy (Lucy Punch) who suspects Elizabeth of her bad teaching ways and wants to continuously dig up dirt on her to get her kicked out of the school. Between everything going on, will she get what she wants?

Let’s just say I didn’t hate the flick, however, I won’t be adding it to my collection either.  The story is pretty simple.  If you are a Cameron Diaz fan, she really does amazing.  My boyfriend and I sat there hating on her character and shaking our heads as to how disgusting a person like that actually would be.  Thats exactly what her role is supposed to do, so she did it right on! Went straight for getting under our skins as a superficial, inappropriate and rude effortless teacher.  You can’t get any better at that (maybe you can), and she lights up this movie.

 

On the other hand, Justin Timberlake has yet to convince me that he can act.  Maybe he just needs to pick better movies.  If you have one, please tell me.  JT was part of N’Sync and I liked that group when I was younger (I know I know, you can laugh) On top of that, he had the weirdest expressions in this movie. Maybe the movie required that, but it was disturbing to me.  Especially one of the scenes…but I won’t say which one to not spoil anyone’s “fun” if you haven’t seen it.  Okay, I have to move on from this character and attempt to erase that image from my mind.  So I’ll move on to Jason Segel, whom I loved.  I haven’t seen him in much before this but he was awesome! Maybe I like to root for the underdog in love stories but he was a fun character, plus he delivered some good lines.  I’m down for more Jason Segel after this…(about that, I have to find time to finish The Muppets)

For this one though, it was less about the romance than it was the girly unfriendliness between the characters of Elizabeth and Amy.  It wasn’t anything bad but it was entertaining to watch.  It had me guessing as to what would happen next.  Lucy Punch isn’t a bad actress.  She’s average but she had some ridiculous moments as well but then, the parts where she interacted with Cameron Diaz, it made me laugh.

I’m not sure I’m totally down to see this movie again and I’m definitely not going to recommend it highly.  But, if it happens to land on TV for free and you happen to want a laugh here and there, its not completely bad.  Cameron Diaz shines at being the ultimate bad teacher and she, at the very least, will entertain you 🙂