Review of Bad Teacher (2011) by Jennifer M — 05 Nov 2012

Bad Teacher takes a fatal misstep by trying to get the audience to side with a truly awful awful AWFUL person. Hey, I love Cameron Diaz - who doesn't? Hence the moviemakers seem to mistakenly think that because its Cameron Diaz, we're automatically on her side.

But her character Elizabeth is so incredibly shallow, selfish, rude to both children and adults, is drunk or high much of the time, and steals money from both a charity car wash and by rigging a contest among faculty to pay for a boob job, that makes rooting for her impossible.

There are no moments of enlightenment or reformation, and yet they slap on a happy ending as if Elizabeth is no different than Mary from There's Something About Mary. Look, we all like to root for the rebel in the movies, but the Han Solos and Randle P.

McMurphys all have some redeeming features that allow us to identify with their maverick spirit, whereas Elizabeth has absolutely none. I should point out this criticism is not a knock on Cameron Diaz, she plays the part very well and is still a bombshell and there are a couple funny moments, the problem is she's in the wrong movie - the comedy needed to be much blacker to really score with this character, but the studio/director obviously didn't have the courage.