I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced comedy so good it feels like a heroin flop, but that is exactly what Bad Teacher did for me. And sure, it’s 2 a.m. and I’m not normally up this late. (Did you know there are people out at this hour? Wearing hot pants and making out on Sixth Street, and all sorts of stuff?? Those crazy kids.)
Dodgeball quizzes -- why didn't I think of that??
Anyway, what you probably need to know is this: not a single character in Bad Teacher is a good person. Thank God. You’ve got your idealistically idiotic young teachers, Amy Squirrell (Lucy Punch) and Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake). You’ve got your hardened “bad” teachers, Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) and Russell Gettis (Jason Segel), and your cowardly admins (John Michael Higgins) and your corrupt test admins (Reno 911‘s Thomas Lennon). You’ve got your horrible students and equally horrible parents (a bunch of kids plus Molly Shannon). Oh, the reality!
Authored by two Office alums (Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg) and directed by Jake Kasdan (who also directed Orange County, one of my faves) this movie ain’t no Dead Poets Society. Best lines, IMHO:
(from a student, upon being told to think about her life choices) Do I get extra credit if I think about it?
The Bad Santa warning applies: if you don’t like the idea of teachers smoking up, swearing, having sex, and making fun of students, you will NOT like this movie and you probably shouldn’t see it. Myself, I enjoyed the horrid snarkiness of it all — and OMG, it made fun of Stand and Deliver AND Freedom Writers, thank you tiny, infant baby Jesus in his manger.
On the right, Halsey's nemesis, played by fine comic actress Lucy Punch. Please note: this is ONLY time Diaz's character wears glasses.
I’m not gonna go through the whole plot, but suffice to say that Elizabeth Halsey is not delivered in any trite sense (thank you Krishna, thank you India, thank you disillusionment) and I found the entire thing structurally excellent. Everybody gets what they deserve. Well-acted, well-scripted, and well-played, Bad Teacher. Words cannot express how much I approve. Also, great cast, great clothes, great editing. What more do I want from life?
Credit to the fellas: Justin Timberlake takes earnestness to new levels of sarcasm, and Jason Segel gets to play edgy and confident for once.
And, If I were feeling academic, I could make an argument for why this movie is the perfect summation of our times: teachers driven to desperate ends because they make no money. The pitting of idealistic, young, student-centered persiflage (“I learn as much from them as they learn from me!”) against the ruthlessness required to teach real life lessons. And finally, a realistic portrayal of teacher burnout, and I don’t just mean showing movies constantly to your uncaring class.
It’s all there. And I find myself thinking of Aristophanes, and a friend’s estimation of why he’s so great: “He makes fun of everyone, equally. No one escapes.” When every single character is a horrible person, it’s easier to have equal-opportunity mockery.
I wondered if this if this movie was going to live up to my Bad-Santa-influenced expectations, and oh boy did it. Granted, if you haven’t taught, or you’re really committed to the idea of teacher-as-martyr, you’re probably not going to be in love with this movie. But I am. And it’s loverly.
Anyone else see it? What did you think? How jaded do you have to be to enjoy this movie?
Amanda:
This is on my list of things to do this weekend with my best teacher friend. So glad to hear it was not a dud. But, like all teachers, I love all movies about schools – so it would have been hard to suck in my book. They had me back at Ferris Bueller and I’ve been following movie flix ever since. Fast Times at Ridgemont High: the list is endless.
I am no martyr and I could use a good laugh.
Ah, Fast Times is a good one, a relic of times past when people weren’t so freaking squeamish about high school comedies. Yes, go see it, make the opening weekend a good one for a woman-centered comedy, and let us know what you think!
I saw a Bad Teacher preview a few weeks ago and thought the film was a definite maybe. Now, I can’t wait to see it. Also, I very much appreciated your Alanis Morisette song reference…
Well, of course I can’t promise your reaction will be the same, but I think the film’s unquestionably well executed. Let us know what you think!
I won’t be seeing it; I don’t want to see a movie with lots of swearing and sex.
If it were a few years ago, and I heard that a movie made fun of “Stand and Deliver”, I would have said “What the heck?!? How could you skewer such a sacred cow?” I have since learned the actual story behind “Stand and Deliver”–do you know how depressing that story is?
First of all, it took Jaime Escalante ten years–not three, as presented in the movie–to build up to calculus, and his first calculus classes were token classes to give the school a reason to provide “lower math” classes.
Second, the aftermath not covered in the movie includes unions who disliked Jaime teaching a hundred kids in the auditorium, all who wanted to be there, and this was the only way to teach them; enough school politics that Jaime finally decided to just leave for a new school district, old enough in his career that he had no hope of rebuilding a good calculus program there; Jaime’s second-in-command running into similar issues, and deciding to leave, too; Jaime’s original program still exists, but only as a shadow of what was there before.
The only good thing that could be said about all this is that Jaime’s efforts actually introduced calculus to his high school!
While I don’t think Jaime’s efforts should be made fun of, the movie “Stand and Deliver” certainly deserves a bit of ridicule!
We used to have to watch “Stand and Diliver” at least twice a year during staff development meetings.
“Role model?!?!” I said. “Are we watching the same damn movie? Escalante ended up divorced and nearly died of a heart attack. THAT’S what we’re supposed to emulate?”
Escalante also supported Prop 187, a racist, anti-immigration measure requiring pulic school teachers to report suspected undocumented students to la migra. It was passed by voters, but later found to be unconstitutional. And Escalante also supported Republican governer Pete Wilson who was certainly no friend of public education.
Some role model.
Yeah, that’s the part they never tell you: sure, these people may have accomplished some good stuff, but at what cost? Marriage, health, any sort of balance…Even apart from the political issues, it just bothers me that this pathological drive is treated as something you just need to have to be a good teacher.
OK so i’m a bit old for this movie at 66…but believe me it is really a DUD. One of the worst movies i have ever seen and i have seen a lot. I’m surprised That Ms Diaz would choose to act (if that is what that was) in this one. The jokes are lame. A couple of funny situations but i would rather watch the TV program ‘Just for Laughs’out of Montreal for real comedy.
Hey, you’re allowed to have your opinion, but believe me (trained humor theorist here) when I tell you that you can’t assume it applies to other people. Laughter is one of the most subjective emotions there is, dependent on personal taste, socialization, and (yes) generational taboos…so inasmuch as I won’t tell you it’s universally funny, you can’t tell me it’s universally not.
I also loved this movie! I work in a school… yeah… scary how I could relate…lol..and scary how actually (even though exaggerated) those characters actually were to real life in a school…lmao!
[...] Amanda Krauss, at Worst Professor Ever, reviews the new Cameron Diaz movie Bad Teacher “Bad Teacher, Good Movie.“ [...]
My mother and I DIED laughing at this movie. I mean, like, spectacle in the theater type of laughing. She’s a fairly prudish 62 year old woman (she walked out of Old School) and I’m a perverse English/Film professor, and yet this film provided us with comedic middle ground. I had a few problems with it, specifically with Justin Timberlake’s character, who I just couldn’t quite figure out, but overall, I found it highly entertaining. Also, I gotta say – that Jason Segel is kind of cute . . .
If anyone needs to add to the category of films with ridiculous portrayals of academia, I give them the movie TENURE (2009), starring the beleaguered Luke Wilson as the guy whose “cool job” is an English professor at a hoity-toity private university. The screenplay was clearly written by someone without the faintest grasp of how academia actually works. I was yelling at the TV every three minutes.