Teaching how to make comedy films badly.

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2012)

Bad Teacher is directed by Jake Kasdan and written by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. It stars Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch and Jason Segel.
It's a solid premise to work from, it features an audacious and sexy turn from Diaz, while Punch steals the movie from her more illustrious co-stars. Yet Bad Teacher never achieves all that it can as a comedy. It starts off promisingly as Diaz's money grabbing teacher (Elizabeth Halsey) proves to be one big bluffing babe. She drinks, smokes pot, acerbically talks down to her students and does as little work as possible. This is funny stuff, for about 15 minutes, then the joke quickly wears thin. It's then that it dawns on you that the trailer, with it's brief running time and condensing of the premise, is the best thing about Bad Teacher.
But wait! There's a hook, a new addition to the teaching ranks turns her head, the not harsh on the eye Scott Delacorte (Timberlake) is maybe her way to wealth and lazy happiness. Only he likes breasts and poor Elizabeth isn't well flushed in that department, perhaps she can get hers enlarged? If only she could afford the procedure! Wait! (again) There's a financial bonus given to the teacher with the highest results in the state, can Elizabeth reform and spur her class on to greatness whilst snagging the twee Delacorte? Can she win the vicious personal battle with scholastic rival, and major achiever, Amy Squirrel? (Punch) Do we care? No not really, unless you find dry humping the pinnacle of comedy?
There's also the nagging doubt surrounding the confused messages once it's all mercifully over. I mean the bitch wins here. The shallow self centred charisma free Halsey actually triumphs when really she doesn't deserve to. Has she got the viewers to root for her? Well you would hope not since she's cruel and a bit of a moany hole, with Diaz not done any favours by a weak script full of empty spaces where character development should be. It seems that Kasdan thought that dressing up a superficial character in pretty Cameron Diaz clobber was going to be enough to see his film across the winning line. It wasn't and quite frankly Bad Teacher should go to the back of the class and stay there. 4/10 for the efforts of Punch and the underused Segel.