19 August,2011 09:50 PM IST | | Suprateek Chatterjee
Bad Teacher
A; Comedy
Dir: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch, John Michael Higgins
Rating: ''
There exists a great movie about a lazy, unmotivated teacher who uses students for personal gain. This teacher also doesn't care much for the students, often calling them derogatory names and deriding them for their shortcomings. The movie, however, ends with the teacher having taught the kids a lesson that goes beyond the scope of the syllabus and in effect celebrates an irreverent approach to education. The movie I'm talking about came out nearly 8 years ago, stars Jack Black and is called School Of Rock.
Bad Teacher, which substitutes the hilarious Black with the held-together-with-botox Cameron Diaz and a Battle Of The Bands with a pair of new breasts, plays out like a bad version of School Of Rock that was directed in a parallel universe. Unlike its source of inspiration (let's just call it that for convenience's sake), Bad Teacher is sometimes mean-spirited, often illogical and generally unfunny. Among its hilarious jokes are kids being hit in the face with basketballs for answering questions wrongly and a 12-year-old boy showing off a bra given to him by his teacher.
Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsley, an alcoholic, pot-smoking teacher whose primary motivation in life is to find a rich husband. Being a nicer person is way too hard, so she decides that she needs a new pair of mammaries in order to snag a man after being dumped by the man she was engaged to. In school, she has to deal with the annoyingly nice-yet-bitchy Amy Squirrel (Punch) who is hell-bent on exposing her weaknesses to the dolphin-loving principal Wally Snur (Higgins).
However, when trust-fund pretty boy Scott Delacourte (Timberlake, who dresses and talks like Archie Andrews from the '50s) enters the scene, it turns into an all-out competition between the two. Meanwhile, hovering around the sidelines is gym teacher Russell Gettis (Segel), whose job is to calmly dispense subtle witticisms and wait the entire length of the movie for Halsley to fall in love wi--wait, should I have put 'spoiler alert' back there? Goshdarnit.
I was personally dismayed to learn that Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, who have written a number of episodes for the hilarious TV show The Office, are the ones responsible for this clunky script that is devoid of any structure, energy or wit. The laughs are few and far in between and the blatant in-your-face sexuality gets really old after a point. Then again, Diaz's spirited turn makes it watchable in parts, while Segel is his usual effortless, if predictable, self. Punch has the most believable character graph, while Timberlake's character and actions are absolutely inexplicable.
Bad Teacher is a low point in the new brand of American comedy that celebrates irreverence, lowbrow humour and extended adolescence. Do yourself a favour and skip this one. Or better yet, rent School Of Rock on DVD.
