Surprisingly Bad

Rating: 3/10 (25 June 2011)

I went to see this movie based on the trailer which made me laugh even on repeat viewings. Bad Teacher just does not live up to the promise from its trailer.
Cameron Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey who just after finishing her first year teaching middle school has to come back for year two when her rich fiancée dumps her for only marrying him for his money.
Elizabeth is broke and living in a ramshackle apartment with roommate Kirk (a funny performance from Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet). She has no interest in teaching and instead shows her class movies all day to pass the time until a new substitute named Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) arrives to the school with an implied family fortune that Elizabeth can't wait to get her hands on.
Fellow teacher and star faculty member Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) has her sights set on Scott as well and what follows is mostly a fight between the two to land him, which means being underhanded and conniving to Elizabeth. On the side, gym teacher Russell Gettis (Jason Segel) is also vying for Elizabeth's affections only to repeatedly be turned down. A sub plot develops about a bonus for the teacher whose students score the best in testing which Elizabeth cheats to win and creates suspicion and investigation from Squirrel.
The actors are all good. Diaz does a good job of playing an unbelievable character believably. Lucy Punch is over the top as Ms. Squirrel but is consistently funny when on screen. Justin Timberlake has a less forceful role but creates laughs when he's on screen. Jason Segel does good for what he is given but that unfortunately is not very much in ways of dialogue or character. Phyllis Smith of Office fame is great in her supporting role as Diaz's friend as is John Michael Higgins as the principal and Thomas Lennon is adequate in his brief role as a test administrator.
Surprisingly, this movie is bad. The writing and direction is largely to blame. In a comedy, I should expect to laugh. However, this movie attempts to be funny by having Diaz say something raunchy or drop an F bomb mostly out of context and almost none of them land.
I can count at least three minor plots that went absolutely nowhere 1. Diaz's character wanting fake breasts is never given a real explanation but is brought up over and over again 2. Bribing the parents and stealing the dolphin statue from one of them that she gives to the principal 3. Anything with the state of her class or the testing.
Diaz's character Elizabeth is just so meanly written and static while suffering no consequences from anything that it makes her impossible to root for. She already is the uncaring and rude teacher but the script takes it to another level when Scott and Ms. Squirrel legitimately fall for each other with no shadiness. Elizabeth can't take this and gives Ms. Squirrel poison ivy and gets Scott to cheat on Squirrel with her (one of the few raunchy funny scenes that work). Elizabeth never gets any reprimand from the school or even from pursuer Russell (Segel) who doesn't care how awful she is which makes her later consoling a student don't redeem her.
It's also strange how little we see of her actually being the bad teacher to her class. In a better movie like School of Rock we are able to connect with the kids as characters which seemed to be a large missing component from this movie save for one kid.
If you enjoy raunchy humor just for shock value's sake this might be for you but please don't listen to the people saying it's like Bad Santa which is a much much better movie. This doesn't have the comedy or the faint bit of heart to even touch Bad Santa.
I was let down by this one.