A Different Kind of Educator

Cameron Diaz plays one heckuva bad, bad apple in the new comedy Bad Teacher – and I likey...I likey a lot.

As the sunny-looking middle school teacher Elizabeth Halsey, Diaz is a total perpetually eye-lined, red-lipstick-wearing, super-confident, and H-O-T, a--hole.

The actress hasn’t been this good in a while.

She’s foul-mouthed, completely uninterested in her young charges, and out to look out for no one but herself. Elizabeth’s the quintessential modern-day anti-heroine, and she could care less whether anyone likes her. Sure, she still wants to get a guy (a rich one, preferably) to put a ring on it...but only because she wants to retire from teaching and live a life of leisure as a big-spendin’ wife.

Girlfriend’s actually about to see her dream come true at the end of her one and only school year, but then she’s unceremoniously dumped and sent packin’.

Shucks, right?

Three months later, she’s back at school doing what she hates most: working.

If there’s anything to be said about good ol’ Ms. Halsey, though, that’s that she’ll always land on her Louboutin-heeled feet (even if she has to make do in the meantime sharing a dumpy apartment with someone she found on Craigslist).

She’s gotten it in her head that she needs a competitive edge, and that edge, in her field as a gold digger, comes in the shape of big boobs. Yep, she’s gunning for ’em, even though she’s broke – especially after meeting Scott Delacorte, a cute sub (played by Diaz’s ex, Justin Timberlake) who’s totally loaded.

The obvious problems are, as I’ve already mentioned, Elizabeth is not very good at her job, or cares to be. She also perceives the chipper attitude of the teach across the hall, Ms. Amy Squirrel (Dinner for Schmucks’ Lucy Punch, holding her own rather formidably), first as annoying overeagerness and then as a threat when she catches Scott’s eye. And she’s kinda starting to care a little because, unbeknownst to her, she’s letting the simpleton gym teacher played by Jason Segel get to her a little (he suffers none of her fools).

Bad Teacher’s a really funny movie. It’s totally wrong in that Bad Santa-esque kinda way.

It works.

No, really, I mean that, and not just because Diaz gets to let loose like we haven’t seen since, I don’t know, There’s Something About Mary – and even then she played an essentially good gal.

Elizabeth, unlike Mary, is pretty rotten, but not irredeemable. Her school of tough love serves its purpose, and Diaz does a nice job at enlivening her bitchiness with enough heart that we buy her eventual epiphany.

In that sense, Bad Teacher is quite good.

Yeah, there are a couple of loose ends that, if you think about them, will sorta bug you a little, but the laughing, all the good laughing you’ll do also will redeem the movie as a whole if you take it for what it is, too.

My Rating ***

Photo: Sony Pictures.