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While it isn’t the most perfect of comedies to come along in a great while, Bad Teacher is perfect in its gut-busting politically incorrect antics as one teacher robs, cheats, and swindles her way into a new set of boobalicious implants. Straightforward and satirically unassuming, the film – directed by Jake Kasdan (Orange County, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) – does for the teaching profession what 2003’s Bad Santa did for the Christmas season; it demystifies and demoralizes it for the laughing matter that it truly is. Bad Teacher isn’t for everyone. Its rock-and-roll attitude is very backhanded toward the material. It’s unapologetically crude and distasteful and, while it doesn’t quite go far enough, makes every attempt to not be the feel good film of the year.
Written by "The Office" scribes Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, Bad Teacher is just about as uncomplicated as comedies get. Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) in no way shape or form belongs at the front of a classroom teaching 7th grade English. She’s rude, antisocial, and morally bankrupt. She smokes weed in the school’s parking lot, drinks most men under the table, and only shows “teaching” movies during her class. The movie opens with her departure from teaching at the end of the school year as her wealthy fiancée has every intention of taking care of every desire.
Or so she thinks.
Dumped and damn-near destitute, Elizabeth has no choice but to return to her abandoned teaching post which brings on all sorts of hilarious animosity toward her students (she never bothers to remember their names) and her co-workers (she goes out of her way to avoid them). Even the hilarious advances from the gym teacher Mr. Gettis (Jason Segel) get swatted away by her snarky behavior.
Lynn Davies (the scene-stealing Phyllis Smith) is the closest she has to what can be referred to as a “friend” at the school and even that is fraught with Elizabeth’s selfish antics. Believing that she can land a rich man and never have to work again with a pair of bigger breasts, Elizabeth sets her eyes on the new and wealthy substitute, Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) and wildly competes with Miss Squirrell (Lucy Punch) for his attention.
Like a sharp knife, Bad Teacher cuts deeply into the teaching profession and highlights a lot of the unfortunate events that plague the profession. Yet, even at its most extreme, Bad Teacher doesn’t go far enough in its portrayal of a teacher at her extremes. Raunchy and crude (but never demented), the foul-mouthed material propelling the movie forward stays true in that you never feel much for Elizabeth and her mission to get a brand new rack. The only negative is that the film should have been a lot darker than it actually is.
Perhaps Bad Teacher suffers the most in that it’s a tad more episodic in nature than serving up its laughs as a whole and complete narrative that satisfies at the most demented of levels (see Observe and Report). Diaz is sincere in being insincere and turns out a commanding performance that works more often than it doesn’t, yet somehow she remains grounded in the sunshiny aspects of the storyline. It isn’t the cheeriest of motion pictures but Bad Teacher isn’t a Stand and Deliver type of tear-jerker either. There is no moral transformation that occurs within Elizabeth…only the desire to change the physical outside.
With (thankfully) no moral lessons imparted to its audience, Bad Teacher earns a passing grade due to its willingness to condemn its protagonist and entertain its audience.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for sexual content, nudity, language and some drug use.
