Too tame and poorly acted to be funny

Rating: Null/10 (15 July 2011)

Bad acting and bad screen-writing ruin "Bad Teacher", an unfunny comedy which tries and fails to parrot the gross-out jokes of Billy Bob Thornton's "Bad Santa". Mega-stars Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake are our leads, but they have no gift for comedy. Most of their jokes fall flat.
The film's plot, in which a foul mouthed, money and body obsessed teacher learns that money and image aren't everything, is both inconsequential and predictable. Most interesting about the film is the way Diaz's character, a 39 year old slob every bit as rude, vile and sex obsessed as Thornton's bad Santa, elicits no sympathy. Why are we uncomfortable with openly "loose", vulgar, hard-drinking, beautiful, demented, sex crazed women (Cameron's raunchiness was toned down because male test audience members were "turned off" by her character's swearing, particularly her use of the "c" word, usages of which were subsequently cut), but find such attributes in a male lovable and endearing? Use a less attractive, slobby actress for Diaz's role and suddenly you'd have a hit movie; put a sex bomb in there, and suddenly brains are scrambled.
Incidentally, on IMDb, female voters rate this film higher than males, suggesting that there is some kind of cathartic identification going on here. Meanwhile, men squirm.
4/10 - Worth no viewings.