Bad
Teacher
Rated R. Our Ratings: V-2; L -5; S-8/N -1.
Running time: 1 hour 32 min.
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Neither of these bitter rivals fit the mold of selfless educator
devoted to her students! © 2011 Columbia Pictures |
Not many of you should become teachers, my
brothers and sisters, for you know that we who
teach will be judged with greater strictness.
James 3:1
Old James could have been writing directly to Elizabeth Halsey in what many
are acclaiming to be a very
good summer comedy. My companion and I at the screening felt otherwise—Bad
Teacher, Bad Movie!
There are some funny moments in it, and Cameron Diaz and Lucy Punch are enjoyable
to watch as rival teachers with very different approaches to their students,
but even though I realize that this is supposed to be a black comedy, it
just seemed too disconnected from morality and reality for me. Guess my stint
years ago as a substitute teacher and my love for the teacher genre movie
got in the way.
In director Jake Kasdan’s (Walk Hard) popcorn movie Elizabeth Halsey
says Goodbye to her fellow teachers at the end of the school year and takes
off fast in rear gear, almost crashing into the school bus, so eager to get
away that she does not want to take the time to turn around. The gold digger
has her claws into a rich playboy, but her fiance is so upset with her using
his credit cards to buy expensive clothes and jewelry that he brings along
momma to break off their engagement. Badly in need of cash because of her
extravagance, she is forced to take in a jerk to help pay her rent. In the
fall Elizabeth is back at school, but with an attitude so bad that she should
not be allowed within a block of any school.
Rebuffing the proffered hand of friendship from the teacher across the hall,
Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), Elizabeth shows old inspirational teacher movies
to her class while she sleeps at her desk (and embibes when she is awake).
This goes on and on, with never the principal stepping in to observe how
she is doing. She also schemes to raise $10,000 for the breast implants that
she thinks will win her a new lover. When new teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin
Timberlake) reveals that he is heir to a fortune, she starts wooing him,
while fending off Russell (Jason Segal), the slacker gymn teacher who has
his sights on her. To fill up her kitty for breast implants she steals and
pawns the school’s lost and found items; weedles her way into heading
up the school car wash so she can embezzle some of the proceeds (and in a
skimpy outfit soak herself while using her body as a chamois, recalling the
car wash scene in Cool Hand Luke); uses sex to obtain the answers to the
state tests so that she can prepare her students to ace them; and so on.
Thus for us to dislike her rival Amy Squirrel, that teacher must be nasty
indeed—and in a delightful way actress Lucy Punch injects such a mixture
of condescending sugary sweetness and spiteful venom into her character that
she is a more nasty character than Elizabeth, but not by much. Amy keeps
going to the principal with her complaints against her rival, but the results,
truly funny, are not what she expects. There is a halfhearted attempt at
the conclusion to show that Elizabeth has changed for the better, but not
much—certainly not in any moral sense. I can accept films that end
on a note of moral ambiguity—Woody Allen’s thought provoking
Crimes and Misdemeanors is a prime example—but when it is obvious that
the filmmaker shows a character escaping from any consequences of her immoral
actions, and wants us to root for her, that is too much, at least for this
movie goer. Speaking of consequences, it is scary to see what position Elizabeth
will hold at the school in the new school year! Shades of Mark 9:42!
You are on your own for one of the few films I’ve seen that isn’t
worth seeing or discussing.