Blu-Ray Review: This BAD TEACHER Isn't Half Bad
I'll try to avoid getting through this review without being the 1000th person to note that Jake Kasdan's latest, Bad Teacher cribs a bit from Bad Santa's style. I'll avoid talking about how both films share somewhat similar, perpetually stoned/drunk protagonists placed in charge of young children and learning a little something about their own messed-up lives. Oops, I did it right there. Sorry. But I can't really fault the movie for borrowing from the mean/heartwarming Billy Bob Thornton flick--if you're going to lift someone's style, make sure they're the best. And Bad Santa is, to my mind, one of the smartest, most trenchant comedies of the last decade.
And like that movie, Bad Teacher gets quite a few things right, starting with its casting of Cameron Diaz as the foul-mouthed grade school teacher, Elizabeth Halsey. When we first meet her, she's ditching her teaching job to marry a wealthy guy who's finally come to the realization that when Elizabeth looks at him, all she sees are dollar signs. Kicked out, and forced to--gasp--pay her own bills, Elizabeth returns to teaching, spending her days in class hiding behind a pair of wrap around shades and napping through class while at night she hits up the bars to go on the prowl for a new sugar daddy. When this doesn't pan out, she sets her sights on a new substitute at the school, Scott (Justin Timberlake), an overly-sincere and somewhat dim heir to a vast fortune whose recent breakup with his well-endowed fiancee compels Elizabeth to find a way to enhance her own assets. When Elizabeth learns that her school awards the teacher with the best standardized test scores a $7000 prize, she gets motivated to stop showing her kids videos everyday and actually teach them.
I said one of the things that the film does right is casting DIaz, and that's an understatement: she's perfect for the role. Diaz has always been funny, but primarily as the sweet, hot girl next door who might be a little klutzy or somehow awkward. She's made a career of it. But then she made Vanilla Sky back in '01,* and we got to see a glimpse of the kind of damaged, dangerous characters she could potentially play. While Elizabeth is nowhere near her role as Julie in that film, Diaz brings an efficient ruthlessness to the part: she will do anything to get those new set of tits to impress Timberlake, even if it means bullying and battering her young charges until they get high scores on the big test.
Diaz, nearly 40, is still young and beautiful, but minor signs of age have started to make their way onto her face. I don't say this as a dig--it's happening as I type this to every single one of us. But what makes her work so well in this role is seeing those startling blue eyes staring out of a face that's increasingly worn down, that only wears a shark's smile; eyes that give out very little beyond raw hostility and contempt. Yes, that Cameron Diaz. And she has a terrific foil in Lucy Punch's (Hot Fuzz, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) Amy Squirrel, a passive-aggressive over-achieving manic teacher who also has eyes for Timberlake and the cash prize. On the surface, she's as sweet and decent as Elizabeth is rotten, and it's a pleasure to watch them try to shut one another down throughout the movie.
Unfortunately, Bad Teacher let's both actresses--and its premise--down by a truly baffling structure which starts off with some odd stakes and then rushes its way towards a limp conclusion. I'll elaborate on my problems below the SPOILER break.
****SPOILERS****
The breast enlargement subplot wouldn't be such a problem if there wasn't a point in the story where Timberlake's essentially tells Diaz's that he doesn't really care about breast size. Plus, there's very little throughout the running time to convince us that he's lying or that breasts are really a big deal to him. Again, it wouldn't be an issue if the script didn't specifically call it out.
The major issue, though, is the final act of the movie, which sees Elizabeth drug a member of the Board of Testing and steal the test key for her students. Later, Amy Squirrel does a little sleuthing and finds this out, leading to a showdown where Elizabeth has to blackmail her way out of the jam, turning the tables on Ms. Squirrel. Okay, all fine and good. But just before this sequence, there's a slight hint that Elizabeth didn't cheat that goes unacknowledged, and after the showdown, Elizabeth makes an incredibly abrupt turn, turning down Timberlake's character in favor of Jason Segel's schlubby, nice guy coach character.
It never feels earned, we don't see her character ever really reach that point, and it feels cheap and weirdly jarring in the context of the rest of the film. You're almost surprised the movie is over when the credits start rolling. Part of me wishes it had stolen whole-hog from Bad Santa and resolutely refused to have its main character "learn" anything. By the end of that movie, Thornton just realizes there's a line he won't cross, but he remains the same fundamentally screwed-up character, albeit now with a support network of other screwed-up characters.
****Spoilers End****
If you can look past the failure of the ending, Bad Teacher is two-thirds of a really funny comedy. Diaz and Punch together are worth checking it out.
*There's a streak of this in A Life Less Ordinary, a movie that I (irrationally) love, but admittedly remains for most viewers an indefensible mess.
