Big Screen Blurb: Bad Teacher

Pop quiz...and this is worth 100 percent of your grade for Weekend 101:

Bad Teacher = ?

 A) Bad Movie

 B) A pat on the back for the trailer producers, because they duped me into thinking this was going to rock.

 C) You're kidding me, right?

 D) Mrs. Mayfield from first grade

 E) All of the above

If you answered "E--All of the above", you just passed Weekend 101. You also have a good chance of enjoying a beautiful weekend with perhaps another movie. Afterall, there are plenty of great ones out there. In fact, if my clock could rewind to Friday night--I'd go see Super 8 or HangoverPart II again before dropping coin and precious weekend seconds on Bad Teacher.

Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz) is not just a bad teacher; she's a miserable human being. She's a gold digger who was recently exposed, and promptly dumped, by her fiance to be--now, she's struggling. With no other choices to make ends meet, back to school she goes. There she meets Scott (Justin Timberlake). He is, as they say in the gold digging game: NEXT! He's got family money and plenty of it. Plus, his naive nature makes him seemingly easy pickins' for our pot-o-gold pro. Enter Amy (Lucy Punch). She's also a teacher at JAMS (John Adams Middle School) and a good one, albeit a little weird one. Amy also has eyes for Scott. Elizabeth is forced to step up her game and that means purchasing a pair of brand new boobs to woo Scotty-boy. This means coming up with ten grand on her own. Meanwhile, here's Russell (Jason Segel). His sights are set on Elizabeth, who of course ignores him and his gym teacher salary. She's too busy eyeing various ways of raising dough in order to increase her titillating boob fund. Yadayadayada some steamy car washes and a budding rivalry later (Amy vs. Elizabeth), we're pretty much back where we started.

It's really not very funny, which is pretty disappointing because I really thought this one could be quite entertaining. Not so much: 2.0 Stars. Sure, there are some funny moments, but you probably experienced the same number of those laughing in line with friends while making fun of the people going to see Cars 2--well, the laugh was on us.

Actually, if Bad Teacher deserves any credit at all, it would be for some groundbreaking character growth. Groundbreaking in the fact that there was really no attempt to make the main character grow at all. Pretty unique, huh? After all, at the beginning of the flick, we see Elizabeth. She's a horrible teacher and a pretty horrible human being as well. She cares about...well, let's see...HER. Fast forward 92-minutes later and we find Elizabeth. She's still a horrible teacher and a pretty horrible human being. That deserves some cudos, right? I mean, the standard formula here would be to take a self-centered gold digger and through a series of experiences of humanity, she begins to see the light--bond with the kids...care about them a little more than herself...embrace the no-dough gym teacher and love him because of a great connection and not a platinum card. Is that what we see from ole Liz? Nope. We see little to no character growth whatsoever. That's pretty groundbreaking stuff. At least it's real, right? How often do we see annoying co-workers, friends, significant others, etc, go through a series experiences and come out as big a jerk as they were before? That is reality, right? I needed more. I needed more funny. I needed more character growth. I needed to see Liz connect and begin to make a difference in someone's life besides her own.

As for the cast...well, I love Cameron Diaz. I even liked Knight and Day despite a lot of bad reviews (which I suspect were primarily based on a Tom Cruise bias stemming from his religion of choice, which I'm a little more objective about than most), but Cameron in Bad Teacher, well, she did "bad" no mis-justice. Give her that much credit. Actually, I really can't complain about the acting here. I love Diaz, Segel and even Timberlake was okay. Each lived up to their role. The problem here comes from a script that need a few shots of hilarity added if it was going to live up to the comedy genre. The other problem: Give me some character growth. We get the alternative in real life and it's no picnic, baby.

Skip this one altogether...and stop making fun of the little kids and hapless adults in line to see Cars 2!!! A few million five-year olds can't be all wrong.

True...OUT!