Bad Teacher

dir: Jake Kasdan

Look, I find it strange that people keep equating or comparing this flick with the Terry Zwigoff flick Bad Santa. As far as I can tell, having watched both, the only thing they have in common is the same adjective in the title. Other than that, there’s no connection.

I mean, does Cameron Diaz piss her pants at any stage? Does she sodomise a plus-size woman in the change rooms at a mall? Does she generally indulge in behaviour that would get most people arrested, let alone fired from their job as an educator of young minds?

Well, actually, on that last point…

Maybe they’re linked in spirit, but Bad Santa was such a singular act of misanthropy that it seems churlish to compare anything to it, even despite the ridiculous ‘happy’ ending the Weinsteins forced onto the end of the flick. Bad Teacher’s trading on something less radioactive, but probably more enjoyable.

As well, as opposed to any flick by Terry Zwigoff, the main purpose of Bad Teacher is to be a funny, and a funny workplace comedy at that. And I found it pretty goddamn funny, truth be told.

Diaz is not an actress I enjoy in most flicks. There’s no point going into the reasons, it’s not entirely her fault (though she knows what she did). I have enjoyed her in a few flicks, though, the main one being Being John Malkovich. That one good performance leaves me with hope that she’d eventually be able to do some decent acting again. She does well enough here, with a part that seems comfortably easy for her to assay.

Her character of Elizabeth Halsey is distinct simply by the fact that she’s a selfish, hedonistic gold digger. That in and of itself isn’t that interesting, but the juxtaposition to give it some resonance is that she’s a teacher. If a character from Showgirls or Sex And the City is hedonistic and monstrously self-centred, no-one bats an eyelid because what else would they be? But when it’s a person in a position of educational importance and authority, shaping the young minds and souls of the leaders and gangbangers of tomorrow, well, then it’s positively terrifying.

She clearly doesn’t give a good goddamn about any of the students, and barely speaks a civil word to any of the other teachers. At the flick’s beginning, she seems to be about to leave the hated school in the Chicago system where she works, through marrying some rich mark. As she walks into her fiance’s house, she bellows out: “Honey, get hard, because I’m gonna suck that dick like I’m mad at it”.

Now, the context alone, what precedes and follows, were funny enough; her delivery was spot on, also when you consider that it’s being said by a cynical, manipulative freaky woman, it’s also illuminating character-wise. But I was taking a sip from a water bottle at the time, and when the line registered, I pretty much choked half to death.

Considering what happens to her from that moment on, requiring a readjustment and reappraisal of her ambitions, I was in the right frame of mind to enjoy the flick. Really, that’s all it takes. Regardless of whatever else you might hear about the flick, Diaz does an excellent job embodying this character. And the character herself might be a manipulative bitch, but she’s hellishly entertaining at what she pursues.

She then sets her sights on a new teacher, a total dweeb played by Justin Timberlake who, if I recall, used to go out with Cameron Diaz. No, I don’t read Who weekly or any of that crap. There’s just stuff you remember with that part of your brain that otherwise would find the cure for cancer or ice-cream headaches if it wasn’t filled up with celebrity trivia.

I’m sure this means they found it even more uncomfortable during the pseudo-sex scene, considering their history. Regardless, his presence means that Elizabeth has a new plan for getting out of having to turn up to work every day (let alone actually teach, which she refuses to do). It involves getting enough money together to get a boob job.

Instead of doing it the way most women in America seem to do it: by having some porn producer / strip club owner pony up the cash, and then spend the rest of your natural life on the pole / multiple poles trying to pay the debt off, only to sink further and further into debt because you spend the money you earn on meth and more tattoos, Elizabeth finds other ways to scrape the cash together.

Of course people, mostly a fellow teacher (Jason Segel) who sees through her bullshit but likes her anyway, point out that she shouldn’t get a rack job, that she’s fine the way she is, but, really, she’s reduced the sum of human interactions and relationships to a simple equation: her plus implants equals marriage to a wealthy man.

The ways in which she tries to earn the money are truly comical. Not so much the pornographic car wash she puts on, which looked like a scene lifted wholesale from one of the Charlie’s Angels flicks, but the aspect that motivates her into finally trying to teach her young charges. When she finds out about a Teacher of the Year award, with a cash money prize of around five grand, she finds it necessary to change her study plan.

Of course, up until that moment, her study plan consists entirely of getting her classes to watch inspirationally insipid Oscarbait school dramas like Stand and Deliver, with Edward James Olmos, Lean on Me with Morgan Freeman and, of course, Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeiffer. While the film’s roll, she’s generally sleeping off the booze and dope she’s been consuming, god bless her little cotton socks.

Once she knows about the prize, she’s all business. To her credit, since it’s never articulated, the path for her character isn’t the realisation that the kids are people that deserve her attention, and that she has a tremendous responsibility to them blah blah blah. She remains just as uncaring about their fates at film’s end as she does at the beginning. In fact, her solution to her teaching issue, which is trying to ensure most of the kids pass, is a criminal solution very in line with the character we’ve seen thus far.

The flick throws up a nemesis for Elizabeth, in the form of a rival teacher who actually goes to the trouble of teaching the kids, and who is less blind to Elizabeth’s flaws. She is also a rival for the rich dweeb Timberlake character’s affections, which makes her even more dangerous. Apart from her character being quite annoying, they, being the filmmakers, perhaps made a mistake with the characterisation. Lucy Punch is a funny Brit performer, but her character here of Amy Squirrel is a worthless counterpoint to Elizabeth, since all of her accurate complaints as to Elizabeth’s actions are discounted by the way she’s portrayed as a nut.

And, let’s face it, the title is accurate. Elizabeth is a terrible teacher. Her contempt for students and fellow teachers is exceeded only by the awful shit she does over the course of the flick, most of it criminal. About the only thing she doesn’t do is have sex with students. Let’s thank the lord for small mercies, or maybe scream profanities at him.

She does have some moments where she gives honest, unfettered advice to some kids, basically cutting through the layers and layers of feel-good empowerment bullshit so many kids have been fed for so long. She tells a kid who moons after a popular girl in no uncertain terms that he has no chance, because he dresses like a dweeb and looks like a moron. If she’s telling the truth, then how can it be so wrong?

It’s not as if the flick is spontaneously implying that she cares now for these kids. It’s just another way of torturing people from a position of Olympian disinterest for the feelings and well-being of others.

And yet she was hellishly entertaining. I found the whole kit and caboodle entertaining. Looking at it as more of a workplace comedy than anything else, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there are actors from The Office playing roles here, it entertained me plenty. In the current climate American pop cultural climate, where teachers are being demonised by right wingers and blamed for everything that’s going wrong in the country, it’s nice to see a flick that has some fun with the whole premise. Sure, teachers have a difficult job, but they’re not all saints. I don’t think this flick is trying to imply that all teachers are a blight upon humanity, and are all over-sexed gold diggers, just that this particular one should probably never have gotten where she did.

The ending could be seen as a bit of a cop-out, but I hardly minded. It’s not as if Elizabeth does anything thoroughly evil (though some aspects are borderline), and everything she did made me laugh, so she gets carte blanche on the moral equivalence scale as far as I’m concerned. She’s a bad teacher, but there’s no harm in admitting that maybe some teachers are selfish monsters. It just reminds us of how great the good teachers out there are.

7 times and who dares to imply that teachers are binge-drinking reprobates out of 10

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“Well, that's my spiel, as the Jews say.” – do they really – Bad Teacher