Bad Teacher features an anti-heroine who is a rarity in recent American comedies, which seem too conservative to actually go out and be flat out nasty: someone who starts out nasty without much of an explanation.
That anti-heroine is Elizabeth Halsey, played by Cameron Diaz very comfortably. Halsey is a lazy, inattentive, foul-mouthed teacher at John Adams Middle School (also known as Jams), who barely attends any staff meetings or does any teaching as long as her future wedding to her sugar daddy who she doesn’t love will cough up the money she needs to live the rest of her life in affluence. Teaching is just something to do on the side. Gold-digging is her real job, manipulating men is her real forte.
When the engagement to her sugar daddy falls apart and she has to resume teaching, prospects seem dim until the arrival of Scott Delacort (Justin Timberlake), a timepiece heir who seems too clean-cut and good to be true. Delacort is the sort of guy who looks at photos of his top-heavy ex and exclaims what a big heart she had. Given Timberlake’s shown to excel at playing scoundrels on screen (notably as Napster founder Sean Parker in The Social Network) and can project a distinct raffish charm, one just wonders if there’s something up with him here.
In a decision to get herself top-heavy and become more attractive to Scott, Elizabeth realizes that she can get there if she pockets some funds she raises from the next charity car wash, which she does by recreating the famous car wash girl scene from Cool Hand Luke. The rest of the cash she can get provided she wins the award for becoming a good teacher; a task she springs into with the same dedication with which she pursues men. This puts her at odds with Squirrel, and soon their rivalry just grows in intensity and ratchets upward. Squirrel, hilariously played by Lucy Punch, is a slogan-obsessed “good teacher” who has been winning awards for years, and is not about to let it all go to someone else, especially Halsey.
Yet for all its promising starts and well-conceived central character, Bad Teacher nevertheless does not always strike the balance of nice and nasty that it should. The movie for one features one of the most poorly executed attempts at sexual humour I have seen in a while. Yet Halsey’s challenges are never really convincing, given how easily one estimates she can overcome them, and instead of being an anti-heroine who can continue on for a few more movies, Halsey does become predictably a “best girl moulded out of faults” who does eventually find a respectable place in society. Still, a game supporting cast do what they can, with Punch, Segel (as the coach with an eye for Halsey) and Phyllis Smith as a harried colleague all showing ample comic gifts.
Bad Teacher features an anti-heroine that kids everywhere can look up to, but it doesn’t bite into the apple as hard as it should.