Bad Teacher
“Bad Teacher” proves that an antihero comedy can be a tough sale. It’s hard to pull for (and laugh at) someone who has no redeeming qualities. Billy Bob Thornton pulled it off in “Bad Santa” because he’s good at being rotten. Will Ferrell sold Ron Burgundy (“Anchorman”), who was a selfish womanizer, basically because he loved his little dog, Baxter, so very much as to have a complete breakdown once the canine was punted from a bridge. Cameron Diaz does not fare so well as the terrible educator, Elizabeth Halsey, however. She spends the movie smoking weed, yelling at kids and lying her way through life. You need to love hating an antihero. With Diaz, it’s too easy getting stuck on the hate part.
Miss Halsey is a reluctant teacher who is looking for a sugar daddy to whisk her away from her drab existence. She is awful and rude to everyone around her and does not go to the trouble to sugarcoat her opinions. When her rich fiancé realizes that she is only after his bankroll, he dumps her quick, leaving her to go find her next victim. She decides that she needs a breast augmentation (boob job) if she is going to land a solid chump and spends the rest of the movie cheating and stealing from children to accumulate enough resources for the surgery.
That about sums it up. We are never told why she is so horrible and materialistic, we are just spoon feed scene after scene that features Diaz cursing the punch lines. I like crude/rude humor as much as the next frat boy but some substance would have been nice. There is a slight romance-interest-thing with the hilarious American actor Jason Segel (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) and a rivalry-with-the-prissy-teacher-thing concerning the hilarious British actress Lucy Punch (“Dinner with Schmucks”) and Diaz spends the entire film saying ridiculous statements that are meant to be shocking but usually just come off as mildly irritating.
The sad thing about “Bad Teacher” is that nearly everyone surrounding Diaz generates laughs. Punch is amazing as the schizoid across the hall and Segel is as likeable as ever. Justin Timberlake tries too hard throughout but even he has a chuckle-able moment involving completed sexual activity with his pants on. Director Jake Kasdan (“Orange County” “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”) knows funny and is working here, for the first time in his career, with a script he didn’t write himself. It shows and most of his personal touches are missing. The movie rests far too much on what little value there is to Diaz acting like a bad girl.