“Bad Teacher” had me at the moment in the trailer when Cameron Diaz’s Elizabeth Halsey — when informed that a meeting is mandatory — says “I don’t give a f–” and then they cut to the next scene.
Especially in this day and age when we’re all jobless or scared of being jobless, it’s refreshing to visit a fantasy world where you can buck the system without consequences. Elizabeth’s fellow teacher Lynn (Phyllis Smith, playing an even more timid version of her “Office” character) represents how we would react in the real world. She mumbles something about how she might skip the mandatory meeting too, or maybe not. Or maybe she’ll sit in the back and leave early. Or maybe she’ll stay for the whole thing.
Even modern moviemakers have a tendency to lean toward what’s expected of them in a big summer comedy. For example, we can assume Elizabeth will be reformed as the film progresses, gradually learning how to be a good teacher. And maybe like Jack Black in “School of Rock,” some of her unorthodox ways will be adapted by the establishment, and when the end credits roll, everyone will have learned a valuable lesson.
But the brilliant and frustrating thing about “Bad Teacher” is that it doesn’t conform to that formula; it has a free-spiritedness that you might expect from a pair of writers (Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg) who cut their teeth on “The Office.” It’s a one-note free-spiritedness, though; in every scene, Elizabeth will be a bad teacher, just as Michael will always be a bad boss on “The Office.”
Hypocritically, I loved watching Elizabeth (and Diaz, who can be completely adorable when that’s what the role calls for) be bad, but I also wanted her to be good in the end. “Bad Teacher” doesn’t have good guys and bad guys, though; Elizabeth gets away with a lot of her crap, and things don’t always work out for the good teacher, Amy Squirrel (English actress Lucy Punch, doing a flawless American accent and perhaps breaking through as a U.S. star).
Still, I liked the characters, simply because I liked the actors. There’s also Jason Segel as the gym teacher crushing on Elizabeth, and a dressed-down Justin Timberlake as the nerdy new teacher who has a thing for Amy. And, of course, gold-digging Elizabeth has a thing for Timberlake’s Scott, because he’s rich. (I’m not usually a gossip-page follower, but watching this movie, it’s hard to figure out why Diaz and Timberlake broke up.)
A lot of the comedy is broad: The biggest laugh in the theater came from an obvious bathroom joke, and further chuckles came from surprisingly inserted swear words. “Bad Teacher” has some obvious set-ups, but give it credit for execution, such as the scene of the male students (and dads, and a police officer) gawking at the scantily clad Elizabeth at the seventh-grade car wash.
“Bad Teacher” goes slightly deeper than that, though. While every audience member has been a student at some point and will therefore appreciate the movie from that angle — like when Amy devises a “quadrant” system for monitoring the lunch room — the film will especially appeal to teachers who are willing to laugh at themselves. It has plenty of on-point, inside-the-teacher’s-lounge portrayals that got big laughs from the teacher I attended the picture with. One of the best caricatures is Dave Allen as a “cool” history teacher whom the principal (John Michael Higgins) bizarrely thinks is hilarious. Allen essentially reprises his role from “Freaks and Geeks,” where “Bad Teacher” director Jake Kasdan got his start.
And while “Bad Teacher” doesn’t quite have a heart, it does have a brain. When one of her awkward seventh-graders confesses his love for the hot girl in class, Elizabeth tells it to him straight: That girl will never be interested in him; his time to shine isn’t now, and it won’t be in eighth grade, either. He’s sensitive, and she doesn’t mean that as a compliment.
I was rooting for the sensitive kid to, if not win the girl, at least have a happy conclusion to his arc. “Bad Teacher” crushed my hopes on that point; the film shows people acting cruelly and inconsistently, and it portrays a bizarre and unfair world. I resist that to my escapist moviegoing core, yet I begrudgingly respect what amounts to a series of snapshots of the way things are (with bathroom humor and swearing and sex liberally peppered in).
And in the end, when Elizabeth — who may or may not have learned a valuable lesson (I don’t say that to avoid spoiling things, I say it because I’m not sure if she learned anything) — becomes a guidance counselor, I was excited about the potential next chapter: “Bad Guidance Counselor.”
If that sequel comes to pass, I’ll be there — laughing and cringing.