Ileana’s Movie Review: Bad Teacher

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch

Summary: Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz) is a bad teacher and a pretty bad person as well. She’s heartless, self-centered, and manipulative. She gets dumped by her fiancé for being a gold digger, and has no choice but to be a junior-high teacher to support herself. Her life’s ambition is to get breast implants, but she needs $10,000 for the procedure. She spends her days showing movies to her students, fending off advances from the phys-ed teacher Russell (Segel), and sneaking away to smoke pot. Things looks up for her when a wealthy new substitute named Scott (Timberlake), comes to the school. Unfortunately, rival teacher Amy (Punch) also takes notice. Elizabeth then needs to figure out how to beat out Amy for Scott’s attention as well as the year-end bonus.

While there are funny moments in this movie, it’s by no means a comedic gem. There’s drug use, bad language, and one of the most uncomfortable and awkward sex scenes I’ve ever seen. None of the characters are very likeable, with the exception of Jason Segel who should have had more screen time. Timberlake has proven he can do raunchy comedy from his work on SNL, but his performance was a bit flat. And while Diaz’s character does have some redeeming qualities near the end, it’s not enough to get me to care.

Trivia: Bradley Cooper was considered for one the male roles

Rated: R – For sexual content, nudity, language, and some drug use.

Grade: C