Review: Bad Teacher

If only Cameron Diaz were my middle school teacher, I actually might have gone to class.

Director Jake Kasdan’s black comedy Bad Teacher is a story of Elizabeth Halsey, a lazy, pot smoking, gold digging teacher played by Cameron Diaz who wants nothing more than to find a rich husband and never work again.

Diaz wears scandalous, short, tight skirts and sleeps during class while the students watch movies. Like I said, I wish she were my teacher. She is only teaching to save money for a boob job so she can land a wealthy husband. Diaz lands a few one liners but doesn’t have much to work with with such a weak script.

Jason Segel plays the gym teacher who is always trying to score a date with Diaz despite being rejected every time. Segel did a great job…playing the same character we see him play in all of his movies. And it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen between him and Cameron Diaz in the film.

The story follows the classic romantic comedy storyline where the lead female falls for the wrong guy when the right guy is in the middle school gym right down the hall.

Haven’t you guys seen that movie before? Geez.

Justin Timberlake plays a sexy (duh), dimwitted substitute teacher who also has a ton of family money. Unfortunately, Timberlake’s performance didn’t impress me as much as his skits on SNL. However there are a couple of very funny scenes with JT and Jason Segel where Segel is being a complete jerk but Timberlake is oblivious to the whole thing. And I can’t forget about the dry humping scene. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.

The goody two shoes teacher across the hall played by Lucy Punch stole scenes away from the big named actors. She plays Amy Squirrel who never swears, takes her job way too seriously and had a serious unknown meltdown in 2008. She is the counterpart to Diaz’s character and the two battle it out to win Timberlake’s heart as well as getting the bonus at the end of the year.

For a movie that threw around the F-Bomb a lot, showed some female breasts, had drugs and alcohol, some very provacotive clothing and suggestive conversation topics, I thought the film would be more offensive. One of the themes in the movie was doing the bare minimum just to get by. That’s what I thought the movie did. They scratched the surface with their profanity just enough to get that R rating they were looking for. In order to title a movie “Raunchy”, the film has to hit below the belt.

I guess I’m saying I’m disappointed that the movie didn’t offend me. It’s weird. I know.

Overall I give Bad Teacher 2.5 dunce caps out of 5.