Very funny movie!

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2014)

A movie that is simply very funny, I'm surprised at the many people who hated it. There were plenty of laugh out loud moments, and the outrageous behavior of the Cameron Diaz character was done is a clever enough way that it wasn't crude, everything that is done is motivated by the situation. It's been suggested by some that reaction to it is generational, but I'm 77 years old and I thought it was great humor.
Maybe some people are sensitive to using the public school environment as the basis for humor, that it's in poor taste, but given the state of the U.S. educational system it's hardly a sacred institution.
The whole cast is excellent, comedy isn't ever easy but characters are created that are effective without being overdone, which is the common and fatal flaw of most comedy. You expect good performances from Jason Segel, Phyllis Smith, and Justin Timberlake, and Lucy Punch pulls off the role of Diaz's ditsy competitor very nicely, but for the movie to work Cameron Diaz has to do a comedy role convincingly and without exaggeration, and she does a great job.
I kept waiting for it to fall apart somewhere along the way, but it didn't at all, another thing that's not easy to do with a plot like this. It's got some originality, and is outrageous for effect, but it works, it's just plain funny.