Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
8/7/11
There’s
really no reason to like Elizabeth Halsey. As played by Cameron Diaz
in Jake Kasdan’s new comedy Bad Teacher, she’s crass, selfish, hateful,
manipulative and doesn’t even try to do one of the most important jobs
known to man, high school teacher. Yet, as played by Cameron Diaz,
I kinda loved this horrible, horrible woman. One of seemingly innumerable
hard-R comedies scheduled for release this summer, Teacher doesn’t
even know what gloves are to take them off for a raunchy, misanthropic
character study that’s relentlessly hilarious because it so aggressively
doesn’t give a crap about propriety. And a funny thing happens on
the way to completing a cheerful celebration of bitterness, hatred and
tricking a rich guy into marriage: Bad Teacher actually has
some interesting ideas about the importance of honesty with yourself and
others, even if it’s brutal. And when it comes to high school, honesty
can be really, really brutal.
Elizabeth
Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is happily saying farewell to her fellow teachers
as the school year comes to a close. She’s getting out of teaching
to marry the man of her dreams (Nat Faxon), which is to say, a really rich
guy whose money she can spend. But he’s on to her games and dumps
her, forcing Elizabeth to return for a new school year having absolutely
flatlined on enthusiasm for even keeping up appearances. Tolerating
friend Lynn (Phyllis Smith) because she pays for lunch and blowing off
the advances of gym teacher Russell (Jason Segel), she spends her days
sleeping through class while running movies. But she does find one
thing to get excited about: new substitute Scott (Justin Timberlake)
comes from a wealthy family and Elizabeth is determined to land him.
Problem is, he’s a breast man and Elizabeth is, well, not a breast girl,
so she plots to get enlargement surgery that will cost nine thousand dollars
she doesn’t have. So, one scheme after another results (stealing
money from the car wash, selling grades to parents, etc) until she hears
about the Big Score, a five thousand dollar bonus to be paid to the teacher
whose class gets the best scores on a standardized test. It’s time
to get down to business: if pummeling the kids with dodgeballs to
get the right answers won’t do it, she’ll have to steal a copy of the answers.
And she’ll need to hurry: Scott is dating squeaky-clean teacher Amy
Squirrel (Lucy Punch), who’s everything Elizabeth isn’t.
At
one point, Elizabeth, alone in her apartment, tries to light up her bong,
but her lighter doesn’t work. She tries to light it with the stove,
which goes out. So she heads for a grocery store to buy a new lighter
and finds it closed. Irritated beyond belief, she turns to a homeless
man on a nearby bench and asks why the store is closed. “It’s Christmas!”
How can you not love a woman that horribly self-absorbed? In the
end, Elizabeth hurts no one with her misanthropy so much as herself, so
her miserable, job hating existence full of hare-brained schemes to marry
into the big time is actually pretty relatable thanks to a splendid performance
by Diaz, who’s never been funnier. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve
ever seen a woman wring so many laughs from being a piece of crap, a school
of comedy usually reserved for men.
Miss
Halsey really doesn’t understand what anyone else sees in goodness or honesty,
and in the end her blunt lack of concern for her students’ feelings actually
manages to help one of them out in a surprising way. She’s got a
speech about why the “sensitive” kid (Matthew J. Evans) needs to abandon
his hopes for ever getting the girl in high school (“college is your moment.
Be ready for it.”) that should be framed in every classroom in America:
kids would be better for it. Another thing that’s surprisingly resonant
about the fractured fairy tale written by Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg
is that it’s not a movie about a curmudgeon who turns her life entirely
around so much as it’s about finding your niche in the world. Elizabeth
loves getting high and mocking the foibles of others, and so does Russell.
Neither is a particularly good person, but they fit together. And,
you know, seems there IS a job in this school she can do.
Because
it’s not so much the plot as the characters that make Bad Teacher
go, a good cast is important, and while no one else is quite on Diaz’s
crazy level, performances are mostly solid across the board. Best
is Segal, who is perfectly pitched as a guy who’s an almost 75% better
person than Elizabeth, which still doesn’t make him that great. Watching
Timberlake cheerfully humiliate himself is a lot of fun, and Scott isn’t
much of a prize himself, despite his delusions otherwise (“I hate slavery.
If I could go back in time and end slavery, I would.”). It’s interesting
to watch the different ways he’s spun his pop sex symbol status for effect
as characters who’re fundamentally bad people: he’s certainly not
bringing sexy back in a spectacularly appalling fully-clothed sex scene
with Diaz, but it’s amazing to watch how much he thinks he is. Smith
is delightfully timid as Elizabeth’s clueless “friend” Phyllis, and John
Michael Higgins has some funny moments as a Principal who’s simply too
nice to conceive of the depths to which she’ll sink. My only complaint
is with Punch, whose comic style is a tad too broad for a movie that wrings
most of its laughs out of people being too rotten to break a sweat.
Jake
Kasden’s career has been a mixed bag since his splendid feature debut Zero
Effect, but Bad Teacher is definitely a career high point.
It also gets a lot of mileage out of Michael Andrews’ splendidly mischievous
score. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea since, you know, the lead character
is kinda scum, but for those on its wavelength, Bad Teacher is a delightfully
foul comedy about one of the most delightfully foul women the movies have
ever introduced me to. |
