Bad Teacher
2/4 stars
Starring Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch, John Michael Higgins and Jason Segel. Directed by Jake Kasdan. 91 minutes.
As film school assignments go, Bad Teacher is a potentially “A” topic with a “C” result that would require considerable remedial writing to upgrade.
Title star Cameron Diaz does something she’s normally very good at, which is taking a joke as far as it will go and then some. Students who have done their homework viewings of There’s Something About Mary and Very Bad Things will confirm her brilliance as a gross-out queen.
But these movies were more than a decade ago, when Diaz was a considerably fresher face.
The lustre of her naughty glint and wide grin dims here, try as she might to be deliciously evil. Her illicit instructor Elizabeth Halsey is more pathetic than cunning, which makes it hard to laugh.
The main problem with Bad Teacher is that it’s really just one joke, which is stretched further than the uneven script by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (vets of TV’s The Office) will permit. Jake Kasdan’s flat direction doesn’t help.
Diaz’s Elizabeth is a free-spending floozie with a substance-abuse problem, untreated chronic depression and near-sociopathic disregard for the needs and feelings of others, especially her students and fellow teachers.
She’s the exact opposite of what a good teacher should be, which makes it all the more remarkable that she’s managed to land and keep a job teaching Grade 7 English at the suburban Illinois John Adams Middle School, “JAMS” for short.
Not that it matters to Elizabeth, because her plan at the outset is to ditch her job and marry her rich fiancÈ (Nat Faxon). When that goes awry, Elizabeth is compelled to kick out the JAMS once more.
Naturally, she’s surrounded by one-dimensional sitcom types: a butt-covering principal (John Michael Higgins), an introvert with esteem issues (Lynn Davies), an extrovert with control issues (a game Lucy Punch) and a naÔve supply teacher (Justin Timberlake, a former Diaz beau) who is as dim as a small appliance bulb.
There’s just one person in this menagerie who keeps us guessing as to his thoughts and motives, and that’s the gym teacher played by Jason Segel. His various japes and gaffes suggest he might be crazy like a fox, or maybe just crazy.
But the main comedic course load has to be handled by Diaz, and the burden proves too much for her. Perhaps it’s just a case of her being too good for the script, which provides no back story or justification that might explain Elizabeth’s misanthropy.
A running gag about Elizabeth’s desperate and increasingly dubious efforts to raise $10,000 for breast implants, which she feels she needs to land a man, keeps going long after the laughter dies down.
And it’s not even original — Diaz’s The Sweetest Thing of nearly a decade ago had a similar scene of a woman showing Diaz her new boobs.
Bad Teacher has its amusing moments, but also many where you can’t help wondering about the comedic choices. If you’re going to have the hungover instructor getting her young charges to watch movies all day, aren’t there funnier picks than just a succession of teacher-themed movies?
And if you’ve already decided your film is going to get an American “R” rating - the profanity alone guarantees that - then why not take a few more risks with your comedy?
It’s hard not to muster good will for Diaz, who needs a break after a series of recent duds like The Green Hornet and Knight and Day. She’s often an amusing presence in her movies.
Here she’s just sad, an out-of-control train hurtling towards the inevitable wreck. She makes you want to speed-dial a suicide hotline on her behalf.
Diaz needs to be schooled about one comedy basic: being pitiful isn’t the same as being funny.