Bad Teacher (2011)
Greg Says: Camron Diaz is still Hot
Title: Bad Teacher (2011)
Rating: 4/10
Date: 25 June 2011
Recommendation: If you like Camron Diaz: Wait for the Instant Download, otherwise, Don’t waste your time.
Helpful: 1 out of 3 found this helpful.
SPOILERS WITHIN
“Bad Teacher” features Camron Diaz as Elizabeth Halsey, a teacher of some ill repute who just lost her sugar daddy fiancé and is trolling for her next victim. She finds him in Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) who is a substitute teacher with well-to-do family connections. But getting in her way is goody-two-shoes teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) who has attracted his attentions. Elizabeth decides that to win the man over she needs breast augmentation surgery (costing $10,000) and will do whatever it takes to get the money. Meanwhile PE teacher Russell Getis (Jason Segel) has the hots for Elizabeth. And our little love triangles are complete.
The basic premise of this movie is that Elizabeth Halsey is cool, and everyone else is a dork. Elizabeth smokes pot, and drinks, and lures men to their fate with her sex appeal.
No, that’s not true. That’s the secondary premise of this movie. The basic premise of this movie is that Camron Diaz is still hot. And to prove it she was shot from every possible angle that you can shoot an actor. Long shots, two shots, sexual dry humping shots, and extreme close ups. She looked great in every scene. There is also a very seductive car wash scene.
I think it takes a lot of balls to title a move with the word “Bad” in it. The reviews almost write themselves “Bad Teacher is bad news. Badly Directed, Badly acted… blah blah blah” The fact is that “Bad Teacher” is okay entertainment. This film is pretty juvenile in places and includes plenty of gross-out and fart humor. The best lines are already in the trailers.
Elizabeth does a lot of bad things including seducing the head of the Illinois state testing organization to steal the answers to their standardized test. This enables her to “teach to the test” and win a cash award that allows her to get her boob-job. But don’t worry, she never does.
If this plot device of teaching the students to cheat sounds familiar, you are probably a South Park fan. See season 12, episode 5, “Eek, A Penis!”
The problem with this movie is that Elizabeth has no redeeming characteristics. She is so bad that we wonder why we care about her. But the film pulls it off because Camron Diaz is still hot. Also, every other character in the film is a dork, making her look exceedingly cool. Amy Squirrel (a sort of female Frank Burns) attempts to get Elizabeth fired and in so doing gets arrested herself. But she fails miserably in no small measure because Camron Diaz is still hot.
Justin Timberlake does a good job of playing off-type as the dorky innocent substitute teacher. I liked Timberlake in “The Social Network” and here. He’s not afraid of making fun of himself both in this film and in his occasional SNL appearances.
In the end, this is a Hollywood feature and so the dorky PE teacher gets the hot bad girl in the end (no pun intended). And the transition of Elizabeth from superficial gold-digger to warm, caring gold-digger happens overnight and with relatively little on-screen impetus. But it’s OK because Camron Diaz is still hot.