‘Bad Teacher’ Isn’t as Funny as it Thinks it is (Movie Review)

There is one thing about Bad Teacher that will get tons of praise: Elizabeth Halsey’s (Cameron Diaz) unabashed treatment of her job and students. Speaking from experience, her actions of zero tolerance, non-ego stroking, and toxic honesty are what many educators dream of doing.

Unfortunately this is reality and not many of us have the balls to do what Elizabeth does. If we did, we probably would be out of a job — but perhaps we can start using a more sanitized version of her teaching methods instead of approaching education with heavy coddling and an “everyone is special” mentality.

But that is neither here nor there.

I am here to talk about Bad Teacher, the story of Elizabeth, a gold-digging middle school teacher whose rich fiance leaves her with an aggressive low self-esteem and $45 in her bank account. She reluctantly goes back to work and doesn’t give an “F” about her job or her students. (You can thank the movie’s tagline for the cliche.)

She is on the warpath to get a new, richer man. The solution? Get a boob job — OR — she can attempt to get Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) into the sack. He’s the new, culturally-naive, cardiganed substitute teacher who is the heir to a luxury watch empire. She tries to court him while dodging the advances from the less-refined, but more down-to-Earth gym teacher Mr. Gettis (Jason Segel). She’s also trying to compete for Scott’s heart against Miss Squirrel (Lucy Punch), an eager, obnoxiously do-right cruise director of education.

Elizabeth also has a chance to get a fat bonus if her students excel at a statewide placement exam. With her bitchy, selfish agenda, she uses her unorthodox ways of teaching to get what she wants — much like Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver or Mr. Clark in Lean on Me.

If you laughed at the green-band trailer of this movie, then you’ll probably laugh during the movie — no more, no less. But if you saw the red band trailer, then you basically saw the entire movie.

The character of Elizabeth is the kind of girl who would smoke weed behind the gym during high school and then demand 75 cents from you for a soda. Afterwards, she’d ask to copy your Algebra homework. Watching this movie was kind of like reliving a scenario like that over and over again.

The movie is comedically rocky and LOL moments are minimal considering we already know that Cameron Diaz can play a sexualized, obnoxious, freeloading “WOO! girl” with ease — it’s not like she’s breaking any new ground here. Sure, it was fun to see her in a role like this, but the brash, foul-mouthed comedy lacked something — and that something was anything worth laughing about. Nearly all the laughs seemed to be cued by an invisible flashing sign that says “LAUGH!” Even the I-can’t-help-but-adore-his-humorous-charm of Mr. Timberlake had no heft. Fortunately these two top-billing stars were surrounded by a troop of actors who did make the movie funny (with a lowercase “f”) enough:

Lucy Punch: The British actress excelled as Diaz’s nemesis. Her roles in big Hollywood films have been minimal and she has been severely overlooked, but something tells me that people will start paying more attention to her now.

Jason Segel: Segel’s brand of bluntly sarcastic humor works for him — in any role. We could of used a tad bit more that here.

Phyllis Smith: Sure, Smith’s character of Elizabeth’s co-worker Lynn is a replica The Office‘s Phyllis in teacher form, but her nervous, closet-freak demeanor shines.

Eric Stonestreet: As Elizabeth’s roommate she found on Craigslist, it seems like he was just thrown into the mix just so that the movie can boast, “The dude from Modern Family is in it!” but seeing him as a scooter-riding, bloated, Affliction-donning pseudo-tough guy works.

Thomas Lennon: Another off the radar comedian that effortlessly delivers the funnies. What he did for 17 Again he also does for Bad Teacher.

Molly Shannon: She plays Garrett’s mom and although she really doesn’t have any funny moments in the movie, seeing her in a movie just makes me smile — much like Superstar.

John Michael Higgins: The Christopher Guest staple plays Wally Snur, the principal of the school. He has an inappropriate obsession with dolphins. That pretty much says it all.

Matthew Evans and Kaitlyn Dever: Both portray two misfit students in Elizabeth’s class. Evans is Garrett, the poetry-writing loser that will never get the girl. Dever is the irritable Tracy Flick-ish overachiever. I see a wonderful future for these young actors — hopefully that doesn’t involve actually being a “celebrity.”

Bad Teacher opens in the theaters today.