Review of Bad Teacher (2011) by Phong D — 30 Nov 2012

Hoping to quit teaching and marry her wealthy fiancé, Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) thinks she's set for life. However, when he dumps her she is forced to resume teaching. Determined to find another ticket out of there, Elizabeth soon sets her sites on wealthy substitute teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake). When that doesn't work, Elizabeth decides that to win a man, she must get breast implants. However she can't afford the $10,000. Throughout the rest of the film, Elizabeth thinks of every way possible to earn the money. This includes wearing provocative clothing to increase sales at the students' car wash. When she learns that the teacher with the highest scoring class on the ACT gets a bonus, Elizabeth also steals the answers to the ACT tests to ensure she gets the bonus.

One thing's for sure: this one's for the guys. From the raunchy humor to the basic plot content, I can't help but think that guys will enjoy this film more than girls. Perhaps the film would have been more enjoyable if the humor actually worked. I feel the main laugh-generating scene was supposed to be when Elizabeth and Scott are dry humping in a Springfield hotel room. When I saw this film in theaters, you could have heard a pin drop through the entire scene. Instead, Bad Teacher mainly consisted of rather vulgar jokes that for the most part fell flat. It's almost as if the humor was too forced. However, it was kind of nice to see Cameron Diaz drop all pretence of likeability (she was really quite convincing).However, I would not recommend seeing this film in theaters (or on DVD).