Bad Teacher is mostly just plain bad. Sure, there are some really funny moments. I certainly laughed out loud a few times. But, the overall product was poor to middling. I guess I would compare it to watching bad sketch comedy for an hour and a half with a few good moments. Frankly, I would rather cull YouTube than sit through all of Saturday Night Live, so why would I sit through a film with potentially fewer punch lines.
Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is the bad teacher. She is a gold digger. Mean spirited. Cruel. Conniving. More than just a bad teacher, she is a bad person. I guess that is the point, but generally you do not see much unbridled nastiness without some back story that attempts to explain it. Not here, just born bad I suppose.
Now, with such a bad person, you might expect some kind of redemption. Nope. You would at least see the character develop and learn. Nope. Well, maybe the other characters would band against her. No. Here lies the problem. Elizabeth never develops. She is almost entirely stagnate. You could say there is a little bit of a change because she move slightly off of gold digging, but that is pretty much all of the character development you are going to see.
Then there are the hundreds of little characters and storylines that are thrown in the film, barely developed and then left in a heap on the side of the theater house. Elizabeth has some sort of interaction with one of her students Garrett (Matthew J. Evans). He is the awkward sort of nerdy kid trying desperately to get a classmate’s affection. But, the story is poorly developed and careens in and out of the film. There is a sort of friendship with a fellow teacher Lynn Davies (Phyllis Smith) that goes nowhere. There is just a bunch of nonsense that is thrown at the film with little explanation and no real intention. The film feels like someone had a bunch of ideas and decided to throw them all in there and puzzle it out while making the movie. If they would have taken all of the nonsense out the film there would have been a series of sketches, nothing more.
The characters, for the most part, are over the top and ridiculous — from the sappy Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) to the absolutely strange and borderline creepy Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake). If the characters are not massive stereotypes, they are not even discernible characters.
I am not even certain what the central story was. Is it Elizabeth trying to get Scott? Is it her trying to go after Amy? It certainly is not her becoming a good teacher. Maybe it is her trying to get her boob job? Seriously, I have no idea. It appears to be a jumble of all of these things.
So, what are you left with at the end of the day? You have some trite juvenile humor that is overplayed — and frankly often times not very funny; a few really good jokes; and Cameron Diaz writhing on a car or two. Now, if that is all you want, more power to you. Enjoy. But, for me Bad Teacher was lacking. It was not funny enough or inventive or a good enough story to keep me interested.
PARSI VERDICT: Worth a few chuckles, but not the price of admission.
See what the other half thinks: Haus’s Review.
Hear, hear! This review of Bad Teacher is sufficiently negative for me…and well said!