124, Bad Teacher

The trailers for this movie in my eyes made it one of my most anticipated comedies of the year. Diaz playing a badly behaved renegade teacher, abusing the kids and rocking up to work with a hangover and a sole intention to hook a rich hubby to take her away from the strife of everyday life.


Sadly, the trailer nailed all the best bits and what’s left is a pretty lifeless sub-comedy that focuses on Cameron's sole intentions to buy a new set of boobs and bed geeky heartthrob Timberlake who was uninspiring in this compared to his epic performance in Social Network.

I may have got it totally wrong – the surrounding audience certainly laughed a lot more than I did so maybe I went with the wrong intentions – The thing I love about school movies is the kid’s involvement. You can name loads of great examples that range from Kindergarten Cop to The Principle and I just was secretly hoping that they would act on this but it did lack the interaction I was hoping for. There was the pasty kid nicknamed “Twilight”, the fat kid nicknamed “chubbs” and all of the other stereotypical student groups were covered from the boffin with cookies for teacher at the front to the quiet reserved romantics at the back. There just should have been more of them!

Cameron Diaz took her normal turn at being the hottie with a carwash scene dressed in heels, hot pants and a “Daisy Duke” shirt while dads ogled on with awe. J.T plays the uber rich supply teacher who ends up the aim of Diaz’s antics with the quietly confident Gym Teacher Jason Segal playing a happy go lucky staff member, keen on Diaz but unprepared to put on any form of act to get what he wants. What’s great about this movie is how the relationship between these two grows throughout the movie – watching the playground antics of “hitting the girl you fancy” described by many a love struck teen as the best way to attract a female through to the realisation from Diaz that money does not always bring happiness.

The supporting “rest of the staff”, headed up by goodie two shoes teacher Miss Squirrel (Amy Punch) and the nervy confidence lacking Miss Davies (Phyllis Smith) bring a wry smile to the lips with Timberlake’s ginger haired, bespectacled character poking fun at himself with the worst song and dance routine ever conceived – bless!

The Kids deserved a greater standing in this but there is something slightly appealing about a foul mouthed, dirty minded Diaz that does make this movie tolerable so I will end on a positive.

It will get laughs and it will get praise – so for a minor giggle it’s worth a punt.

So and see this if…………………..You need a stop-gap in anticipation for HP7 & Transformers 3