Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, John Michael Higgins, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch
Genre: Comedy
Age Restriction: 16 (Sex, Language, Nudity, Discrimination)
Plot: Elizabeth Halsey(Cameron Diaz) is a gold digging, sailor mouthed primary school teacher who hates her job. She hopes to remedy the situation by marrying her wealthy fiance. When he dumps her before the wedding all her aspirations are thrown out the window. Penniless, she is forced to carry on teaching and get by on a meagre salary. Her prospects change when a wealthy substitute teacher,(Timberlake) enters the fray. With her sights set on this new victim, she pulls out all the stops in order to fulfill her superficial dreams.
You can’t help but compare this irreverent comedy to the king of’ feel good nastiness’,’Bad Santa’. While that film had a solid character in a solid story, ‘Bad Teacher‘ has a fairly well written lead character in a fairly dismal story.
While it has one or two morsels of humour that are quite funny ‘Bad Teacher’ is let down by a contrived script that assumes vulgarity is a good substitute for well rounded story telling. The crass moments in the film are totally at odds with its fluffy ‘School of Rock’ tone. Timberlake should have been cast as one of the school kids and Segel is used too minimally to boost the story.
You may enjoy enough moments in the film to make it worth your while but ‘Bad Teacher’ gets a fail in the good comedy stakes.