CAST:Cameron Diaz, Justine Timberlake, Lucy Punch, Jason Segel; DIRECTOR: Jake Kasdan; STORY/SCREENPLAY: Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky; PRODUCER: Jimmy Miller, David Householter; CINEMATOGRAPHY: Alar Kivilo; MUSIC: Michael Andrews; EDITING: Tara Timpone; GENRE: Comedy; DISTRIBUTOR:Columbia Pictures; LOCATION: Chicago, Illinois, USA;RUNNING TIME:89 Minutes
Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 1.5
Cinema Rating: For viewers Age 18 and above
Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a smart and attractive middle school teacher whose values and priorities are distorted. She is an alcoholic marijuana-user who swears at her students and shows movies while she sleeps in class. When her fiancée and his mother discover her motives and calls off the engagement, Elizabeth is forced to return to teaching and find another rich man to marry. She is quick to brush off gym teacher Russell (Jason Segel) and create hostility with model co-teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch). When she bumps into Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), a scion to luxury watchmaker mogul, she decides that to win him is to have larger breasts. So Elizabeth focuses her efforts to raise funds for her breast implant surgery to the extent of cheating to get her class achieve the highest scores for the State exams.
Bad Teacher is a successful comedy FOR ADULTS. The jokes are intensely funny and Cameron delivers her lines with depth and conviction. The detailed characterization of the script is amusing, from the persistent but self-confident gym teacher Rusell, the overly zealous Amy on the verge of neurosis to the dimwit charm of Scott. The storyline is clear and straightforward and moves with a clear direction. Technically, the movie delivers and offers quite a few memorable scenes, although not always in a positive way.
However, BAD TEACHER is A BAD movie because it makes no attempt to redeem Elizabeth’s character. Its attempt to put some soul and maturity into her character during a tender moment with her student but her act of kindness to save the humiliated student during the field trip is actually quite offensive. Even when Elizabeth realizes that she doesn’t need a breast surgery or that money is not what really matters in love, it is not enough to earn sympathy from viewers so disgusted with the sex scene between Scott and her and how she manipulated everyone when Amy finally discovered her deception.
Movies like BAD TEACHER are extremely dangerous because of the cheap laughs and seemingly cruel and blatantly bad values disguised as comedy. The movie should be restricted to adult viewers instead of MTRCB’s PG-14 rating.
