Bad Teacher Review

Rating: 6/10 (24 October 2013)

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a beautiful, foul-mouthed, gold-digging teacher, whose wealthy fiancé has just broken of their engagement. Ms. Halsey is now stuck teaching the kids that she was trying so desperately hard to get away from. But when a substitute teacher by the name of Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) catches her attention, she sets off on a mission to gather enough money for her boob job.
The film fails on multiple points, but also strikes with a lot of good laughs. The film is called "Bad Teacher" and it should have been called "Mean Teacher", because Diaz's character says and has inappropriate behavior, but she is not the mean spirited and heartless bitch of a teacher that I was hoping for.
Justin Timberlake is fantastic. Im not a fan of his singing career, but I most certainly am a huge fan of his acting. His comedic timing is great in this film. There is one joke that is on his character's behalf and its a great part because it shows how weird he is, but I just wish they would have explained why his character was that way.
Jason Segel is the stoner gym teacher who will stop at nothing until Elizabeth notices him. It felt like Segel was not in the film that much, but every time he came on screen, he killed it with his jokes. Jason Segel is one of my favorite actors/writer/comedian, and I can't wait to see his take on The Muppets.
The film has great cameos from Thomas Lennon, Nat Faxon, John Michael Higgins, Molly Shannon, and Eric Stonestreet of "Modern Family" fame. This is definitely one of those films where all of the supporting cast gets all the great lines, while the main character falls short, and has all the stereotypical dialogue.
Jake Kasden has directed some episodes of the cult classic "Freak's & Geek's", the entertaining and heart-felt film that is "Orange County" and the wildly hilarious "Walk-Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. It is really disappointing when a director goes from making a couple of great films, and then adding an alright film in the mix. "Bad Teacher" is not a bad film, but it most certainly is not a classic. I give "Bad Teacher" a 6.5 out of 10