Bad Teacher

I've just seen this movie and I feel like it's one of the worst I've seen in a while. The writing is terrible, the whole idea of the movie is just silly and it has no substance if you think about it. It should end in like 10 minutes but a ridiculous amount of details and unnecessary events are being integrated into the flick. This movie is supposed to be funny because it's regarded as a comedy but there isn't a single scene that brought a smile to my face. The only attempts were those typical tainted tendencies of American humor ( I don't want to offend anyone here but it's the truth ): sex jokes, swearing, that ain't funny folks.

I feel like I've wasted one hour and a half of my life by watching this but I don't want to complain. The only reason I kept watching till the end was for Cameron Diaz because she's a good actress but this movie just wasn't for her in my honest opinion.

My advice is not to waste time on watching it but if you're really bored or want to give it a chance because of Diaz you can but be aware, it isn't a joyful ride.

The gold digger Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) quits her job as a teacher at the JAM High School expecting to marry her wealthy fiancé. However, he calls off their engagement and Elizabeth returns to the school.

Elizabeth is reckless, incompetent, pothead and does not give any attention to the students and her coworkers, and she shows movies to her students along the classes. The envious teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) hates Elizabeth and they are estranged to each other.

When Elizabeth meets the substitute teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), she discovers that he is very rich and she flirts with him. Further, she learns that Scott likes big breasts and she decides to have a surgery of silicone-implant. She needs to raise US$ 10,000.00 for the breast-implant, and she learns that the teacher that gets the best scores in the state exam would receive US$ 5,700.00 bonus. Elizabeth changes her attitude and teaches her students to prepare them for the exams. However, Elizabeth uses an unethical means to win the competition and Amy seeks evidences to prove that Elizabeth has cheated the exams.

"Bad Teacher" is a politically incorrect, brainless but very hilarious film. Cameron Diaz performs the most awful teacher of cinema history, the opposite of Sidney Poitier in "To Sir with Love"; Edward James Olmos in "Stand and Deliver" or Michelle Pfeiffer in "Dangerous Minds". Elizabeth Halsey is a slut, pothead, reckless, gold digger, corrupter, cheater, blackmailer and everything that is not good. But I Laughed a lot with this forgettable film. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Professora sem Classe" ("Teacher without Class")

First Santa, now a middle school teacher. I feel as if we're on the verge of a new trend of bad *insert occupation here*. Bad toll booth operators, bad samurai deli clerks…where will it end? Anyway, this is the latest from comedy director Jake Kasdan (WALK HARD) and a decently funny movie with some great moments but finds a major problem in its main character. 2011 hasn't been super strong with comedies; there have been some real good ones (BRIDESMAIDS) but most of them have been pretty forgettable (PAUL). This movie is pretty funny but it still ends on the low end of the spectrum. Cameron Diaz is Elizabeth Halsey, a gold-digging narcissist who has somehow made a career of being a middle school teacher. She believes she's found her way out with a rich fiancé to tend to her every need, but it falls apart when he finally realizes she's using him. Elizabeth is forced to return to her teaching job, where she proceeds to care even less than before. She fends off the advances of gym teacher Russell (Jason Segel) and focuses her attention on landing the new substitute teacher, Scott (Justin Timberlake). Elizabeth realizes that the only way she'll snag Scott's attention is a little self-improvement. Not becoming a decent person or anything, just a breast enhancement. From then on, she lies, cheats, and steals her way to the money she'll need for the surgery; and the only one who suffers is the good teacher (Lucy Punch) who just wants Elizabeth to do her job.

In A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, young Alex (Malcolm McDowell) robs, rapes, and commits horrible acts of violence but maintains a charismatic personality that allows the audience to root for him. Elizabeth Halsey in BAD TEACHER, does not. The "protagonist" in this movie also happens to be the least likable person in the film. As a result, the movie comes off as a little backwards. The character we're supposed to support (Elizabeth) is just a horrible person with absolutely no redeeming qualities presented until the final act of the film. And I mean none. She was a gold-digging fiancé, she's perpetually drunk/high on the job, and she coldly dismisses gym teacher Russell's advances without a glance in favor of stalking the new substitute with the massive bank account. It would almost make more sense if the film focused on Ms. Squirrel (Lucy Punch) living out her dream teaching career when trouble-making Elizabeth comes along and steals her thunder in underhanded ways. Punch should be the protagonist, and Elizabeth the antagonist. But it's not; instead we watch as the film's "good guy" punishes the "bad guy" for nothing other than doing her job and doing it well. Oh well, whatever…it's just a comedy after all. Antiheroes can be fun and it works as long as the film is funny, which it mostly is. The movie is good for some laughs, though it's tough to be anything but distant as you watch everything going down without ever really being drawn into the story.

Cameron Diaz really is the best person for this role. Not because she's horribly unlikeable (I assume she's not) but because she's got a decent comedic background in her films and she's still capable of pulling off drop-dead beauty. In BAD TEACHER, she's the teacher we all wished we'd had in middle school. She really drives the point home when she volunteers to work the school's charity car wash so she can pilfer funds. The supporting cast in this movie is what really makes it enjoyable. Jason Segel is always great as a lovable schlub (which pretty much sums up his gym teacher character) and Lucy Punch is hilariously eccentric as Ms. Squirrel. I've also got to give credit to Phyllis Smith as Elizabeth's friend Lynn. She's probably the funniest part of the movie as the soft-spoken conservative friend who wants so badly to be as cool as Elizabeth but can't bring herself to commit to the debauchery. Honestly, the main character may be crap but the movie does have some real funny moments. I just don't know if there's enough to save it from fading out shortly after watching it. If it helps, I find the movie is funnier the less sober you are when watching it.

There is a certain energy in that movie. Especially at the beginning when Cameron Diaz seems invincible she has the time of her life (almost literally). There is a great sequence where she kinda falls down though which sets of the rest of the movie. Unfortunately even though it does make sense for her character, it does loose quite a bit of its pace from that point on.

Justin Timberlake is good in playing kind of against character and does not care about what people may think. Jason Segel is almost underused in this one and even Cameron Diaz did not really have that many great moments overall. And for a movie that tries to stay raunchy, it does even fail at combining that with the funny elements. While deliciously evil at times (and good), it also misses the point half of the time. Not really bad, but not that good either (I only watched the cinema release and not the extended cut)

Bad Teacher is a hit and miss comedy, with a fair number of laughs, but a fair number of plot holes and questions. Before I even thought about this movie after seeing it, I went and watched Bad Santa for the first time. Both films have a similar premise with the lead character being unpleasant and offensive. But Bad Santa was written with a more style of dark comedy, and let's not forget, with a corrupt childhood and a "whatever" attitude, Billy Bob Thornton's character had a perfectly good reason to be "bad" and mean. Cameron Diaz has none other than she is just mean-spirited and has chosen to pursue a miserable lifestyle.

Elizabeth Halsey is our main character, portrayed by the lovely Cameron Diaz. Elizabeth is a teacher had a normal school, and comes home one day to her fiancée and finds out that his mother has convinced him to call of the wedding. Planning to possibly spend the rest of her life staying at home since her fiancée was rich, Elizabeth must return to the school where she shows her class movies every day while she naps at her desk.

Seeing the attractive substitute teacher Scott Delacorte (Timberlake), Elizabeth makes conversation to learn he has just gone through a breakup with a woman with large breasts. Elizabeth decides to under-go a breast enlargement surgery, a costly but rewarding surgery, to be more self-appreciative.

The main rival in the film is Amy Squirrel (Punch), another teacher in the building. She believes that Elizabeth is a fraud, scamming the school out of money (to pay for her surgery). There is also a strange attraction between Jason Segel's character as the gym teacher. The movie's biggest fault is it focuses more on Elizabeth's sometimes funny, sometimes not antics instead of building up the attraction it should with Jason Segel's character. When the film ends, we feel that the film itself didn't know how to end and just thought up something out of the blue just to give the film some sort of sun-shiny ending. The end would've been better, if we got more of a relationship between the two.

Another problem is that the students are never developed enough. The film has several students that speak to Miss Halsey individually, but it seems it can't make up its mind which one it wants to focus on. We have the brown nose girl and the sensitive kid who writes poetry and is crushing on the girl way out of his league. We get brief scenes with them, but we never see Elizabeth talk to one of the students very much. In Bad Santa, Thornton was always talking to kids and, despite his sour motivation, he was optimistic about the loner he picked up along the way.

The backstory isn't big either. If Cameron Diaz is such a miserable hack behind the desk, why did she take up teaching in the first place? How did she become a teacher? Does the principal never come in the classroom to find that Elizabeth is sleeping while the kids watch Scream? While I liked Diaz in There's Something About Mary and other things she has done, in this, she is just barely likable.

The jokes are funny. But boy does the writing fail it. When the jokes are funny, they are really funny. When the jokes fail, they fall flat on their face and are cringe inducing. The dry humping scene between Diaz and Timberlake is awkward, and is useless. It doesn't cause any advance in the plot or accomplishment among Diaz's part. It's simply there to have some sort of sex scene in a movie titled Bad Teacher.

Bad Teacher is cute, but ultimately not as dirty or as funny as it should be. The relationship between the characters is forced, no one on screen seems to be doing their best, and the screenplay, like I said, can be good but can really bad. A comedy that had potential, also had a really good movie it would be compared to for its lifetime. The result; Santa will live on while the Teacher will need an attitude adjustment.

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, and Justin Timberlake. Directed by: Jake Kasdan.