Bad Teacher
Jake Kasden’s “Bad Teacher” is sometimes very funny, but most of the time simply, sporadically enjoyable. As far as teachers behaving badly comedies go, I’ll take Jack Black and “School of Rock” anyday. It’s not Cameron Diaz’s fault: she’s more than game for the pot-smoking slackabout 7th grade teacher Elizabeth Halsey, a gold digger and man eater whose fiancee has just wisened up and dumped her. Now she’s stuck in her job for another school year. Somehow, she’s managed to skate by on the bare minimum of effort, but she’s in desparate need of a meal ticket. When a cute sub (Justin Timberlake in a hilariously silly turn) starts on the job, she might have found her way out of this job. There’s only so far one can take this story before a viewer starts checking their watch– a kiss of death for a comedy. It’s not as bad as all that, however: in addition to Diaz and Timberlake, we get blasts of comic energy from Jason Segal as a gym teacher with a thing for Diaz; Lucy Punch as an annoyingly chipper rival; and Phyllis Smith as Diaz’s lone friend on the faculty. All these actors give it their raunchy and ridiculous best, but Kasden (who’s given us solid and eccentric efforts in the past such as “Orange County” and the criminally underseen “Zero Effect”) and his writers follow formula in ways that leave the audience wishing they were as reckless as their main character.
