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2011's Bad Teacher is a smarmy and juvenile comedy that offends at every turn, primarily due to the most unlikable lead character I have seen in a movie since Eddie Murphy played Rasputia in Norbit. And unlike Rasputia, this really unlikable character is wrapped inside a smoking hot package.
Cameron Diaz, looking absolutely amazing, plays Elizabeth Halsey, an incompetent, self-absorbed, hedonistic, insensitive teacher who quits her job when she thinks she's landed a rich husband. After her last day at school, she returns home and her fiancee unceremoniously dumps her, so she decides to return to teaching, where her class consists of showing the class a new movie every day. She then decides that the only way to nab a new sugar daddy is with a boob job and does whatever she needs to do to get the money she needs for the surgery.
Elizabeth's single-minded mission is complicated by her attraction to a cute nerdy new faculty member(Justin Timberlake) who, for some reason, is clueless to the kind of person Elizabeth really is and a gym teacher (Jason Segel), who sees through all of Elizabeth's BS but is attracted to her nonetheless, but can't get her attention because he's not rich.
This movie provides almost immediate aggravation because it is hard to believe that any public school system would look blindly past the kind of behavior displayed by Elizabeth in this movie...she curses at students, she smokes pot in the school parking lot, and does lap dances on top of cars during a student car wash. Even when Elizabeth decides to change her ways and be a real teacher, it's for all the wrong reasons...she learns that there's a $5700 bonus for the teacher whose class makes the highest scores on a certain test and she even takes shortcuts to make that happen.
I can't recall the last time a movie just plain pissed me off. I don't know what would motivate Cameron Diaz to appear in a piece of crap like this. After seeing In her Shoes, I thought Diaz displayed the potential to be an actress of substance given the right material but she doesn't appear to be interested in being a serious actress or must have REALLY needed the money. I didn't even buy Justin Timberlake's sexy nerd thing, though his performance of a song in a nightclub was kind of funny. Lucy Punch and Phyllis White are just annoying as two of Elizabeth's co-workers. One of them she hates and the other she uses for her own convenience. Only Jason Segel manages to rise above the muck as the charming gym teacher who never gives up on Elizabeth, even though you really have to wonder why because she treats him just as dreadfully as she treats everyone else in the movie.
This movie is recommended for hard-core Diaz fans only who don't care how low they see their cinematic muse stoop and she stoops pretty low here. 2.5/10
2011's Bad Teacher is a smarmy and juvenile comedy that offends at every turn, primarily due to the most unlikable lead character I have seen in a movie since Eddie Murphy played Rasputia in Norbit. And unlike Rasputia, this really unlikable character is wrapped inside a smoking hot package.
Cameron Diaz, looking absolutely amazing, plays Elizabeth Halsey, an incompetent, self-absorbed, hedonistic, insensitive teacher who quits her job when she thinks she's landed a rich husband. After her last day at school, she returns home and her fiancee unceremoniously dumps her, so she decides to return to teaching, where her class consists of showing the class a new movie every day. She then decides that the only way to nab a new sugar daddy is with a boob job and does whatever she needs to do to get the money she needs for the surgery.
Elizabeth's single-minded mission is complicated by her attraction to a cute nerdy new faculty member(Justin Timberlake) who, for some reason, is clueless to the kind of person Elizabeth really is and a gym teacher (Jason Segel), who sees through all of Elizabeth's BS but is attracted to her nonetheless, but can't get her attention because he's not rich.
This movie provides almost immediate aggravation because it is hard to believe that any public school system would look blindly past the kind of behavior displayed by Elizabeth in this movie...she curses at students, she smokes pot in the school parking lot, and does lap dances on top of cars during a student car wash. Even when Elizabeth decides to change her ways and be a real teacher, it's for all the wrong reasons...she learns that there's a $5700 bonus for the teacher whose class makes the highest scores on a certain test and she even takes shortcuts to make that happen.
I can't recall the last time a movie just plain pissed me off. I don't know what would motivate Cameron Diaz to appear in a piece of crap like this. After seeing In her Shoes, I thought Diaz displayed the potential to be an actress of substance given the right material but she doesn't appear to be interested in being a serious actress or must have REALLY needed the money. I didn't even buy Justin Timberlake's sexy nerd thing, though his performance of a song in a nightclub was kind of funny. Lucy Punch and Phyllis White are just annoying as two of Elizabeth's co-workers. One of them she hates and the other she uses for her own convenience. Only Jason Segel manages to rise above the muck as the charming gym teacher who never gives up on Elizabeth, even though you really have to wonder why because she treats him just as dreadfully as she treats everyone else in the movie.
This movie is recommended for hard-core Diaz fans only who don't care how low they see their cinematic muse stoop and she stoops pretty low here. 2.5/10