Bad Teacher - Review

It is funny to see a movie about teachers, who growing up we only saw them as such, acting in such a vulgar, raunchy way. That is the humour of Bad Teacher. How terrible of a teacher can Miss Halsey be?

Well, she is absolutely the worst. Normally, I would say that you have to like or at least empathize with the main character of a movie in order to get invested. I look at Pitch Perfect as an example where I couldn't get completely invested into the movie because I couldn't stand Anna Kendrick's character. However, this movie is an exception to the rule because the comedy comes from just how truly awful she is.

Elizabeth Halsey is engaged to a rich man who she is only with for the money. After being dumped, she has to return to teaching, a job she has no interest in and quite frankly has no skills to teach either. Instead of teaching, she constantly plays movies in class while she gets drunk or does drugs at her desk. Her plan is to raise enough money for breast implants so that she could land another rich man and get out of doing work for the rest of her life. Whether that be sexy car washes, flirting with the new teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), and eventually stealing the answers for the state exams so that she wins a bonus.

The only thing possibly stopping her is a teacher across the hall, Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch). She is the perfect foil to Cameron Diaz's Elizabeth Halsey. Always perky and sounding like that one teacher you had in first grade who was always super articulate with really bad puns. It honestly makes you cringe just watching her that by default, you are on Ms. Halsey's side, even though her character took cookies from a student while hotboxing her car in the parking lot.

Jason Segel is here too as Russell the gym teacher. He is the one character who actually seems to be down to earth and he is always funny in every movie he is in. He always is someone who you would want to have as your best friend. He is some much needed grounding in a movie like this where everyone is either overly nice and cheery or overaly mean and narcistic.

The reason why I enjoyed myself in this movie was just how over the top and extremely raunchy the comedy is. A scene might be going a certain way and then it is undercut with a sudden rush of extreme raunchiness. I don't want to give away any of the jokes because they are hilarious. However, it's very surface level humour. The humour doesn't come from circumstance, it doesn't come from clever writing, innuendo or satire, it's just dumb, mean humour. Sex, drugs, booze, making fun of someone's appearance, or simply doing the morally worst things imaginable is at the heart of this comedy. There is a place for it for sure, but if you are looking for a character arc, you're not really going to find one here.