Bad. So very bad.

Rating: 1/10 (28 June 2011)

This review is copied directly from my blog: Good.Bad.Ordinary (http://goodbadordinary.wordpress.com) From the trailer, this movie looked pretty funny. Not the least bit intellectual, but funny. And last Sunday afternoon, I needed to get out of the apartment, so my husband and I decided to try out a new theater and check out the movie.
Bad. Oh so very bad. For starters, we're those people who bring their own food into a movie. I usually try to stick to the safety of chips/candy/snacks, but my husband has been known to sneak an entire steak dinner into a show. We got our Chipotle to go, stuffed it in my purse, and walked into the lobby.
We should have known when we walked in that this was not the sort of theater one brings their own dinner into. The price options? $15 for a regular seat, $22 for the premium. This is high even for Austin.
The regular seats inhabited only the first three rows of the theater, and still consisted of leather armchairs with an attached personal concession tray. (The premium seats, in case you were interested, were suede chairs and came with free popcorn and your own personal concession service.) So, we're already feeling awkward just sitting in the theater, which ended up being great because the entire movie was awkward anyway. Every unnecessary sexual exploitation was noted, and blown out of proportion, every combination of profanities shouted to great exuberance, and the plot seemed to exist only as a means of furthering the whole ordeal.
With that in mind, I use the word plot very generously. Usually, in a movie of any worth whatsoever, there is a climax (No, we're not talking about that scene, but rest assured that there was one and that it was uncomfortable to watch). Elizabeth Halsey, played by Cameron Diaz, returns to teaching because she needs new boobs and her uber-rich fiancé a) broke up with her for being a gold-digger and b) refuses to pay for said boobs after their relationship ended. She manipulates her way into every penny the after-school programs raise, and keeps a fishbowl for the random singles she manages to squeeze out of anywhere else.
This is the driving plot, yet it is not resolved. In the "falling action", if you can call it that, she simply decides to not get the surgery. She's already made the appointment, and she's already paid the cash. Did she get a refund? What did she do with the money.
As exampled by the previous two paragraphs, not a single thread of story was ever resolved. She wanted the cute rich substitute teacher? She got him, rubbed it his girlfriend's face, then decided that he was too weird for her. She did drugs on the side? Ms. Squirrel (also the substitute's girlfriend) switches the desks in an attempt to find out the truth. Instead of getting the misfortune she undoubtedly deserves, Ms. Halsey switches the blame and ends up getting that other teacher in trouble for the drugs (after all, the contaminated desk was now in her classroom) and sent to the most inner city of schools to teach.
And at the very end of the whole show, there's a kiss scene. Just one, between Halsey and the gym teacher, played by Jason Segel. This is placed here, I'm confident, so the directors can say, "See? She's not a total lost cause. She did end up falling for the not-as-rich guy." And, because I'm such a huge Segel fan, I loved his character. However, in retrospect, what I probably loved most was the way it was acted, not the character itself.
So, all in all, not the greatest experience of my life. But we left the theater, drove home, and curled up to The Glee Project, which made everything better.