Bad Teacher

Bea says: Terrible title, which made me suspect it was going to be a terrible film. Cecil read out the synopsis to me before we left, and that didn't reassure me either. But it was this or nothing (as every other choice was even worse, or we had already seen) at the Regal cinema multiplex in Vienna, West Virginia on Saturday night.

Acutally it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be - thanks mainly to the 3 main players, Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake and Lucy Punch , as well as their director Jake Kasdan. They all showed great comic timing and deadpanned beautifully (although I was the only one in the audience giggling at the "Eat, Pray, Love" scene, and I am sure the young audience did not the Dangerous Minds reference either...). Of course Diaz has done this many times before, but Timberlake was surprisingly good, and was responsible, I am sure, for the swathes of teenagers in the audience - I didn't think young folk like that went to the cinema anymore!

The basic plot is not-as-young-as-she-used-to-be teacher and gold-digger Diaz finds herself dumped by her mealticket fiance, and reluctantly has to return to school to teach yet another year. She is, of course, completely disinterested in her job, and gets through the days showing DVDs to her hapless pupils while plotting how to raise enough money for breast enlargement surgery, in order to catch another rich bloke.

Enter Timberlake, a serious, and seriously well-off, substitute teacher. Throw overachieving teacher-across-the-hall Amy Squirrel into the mix and the film is basically a classic love triangle, with gym teacher Jason Segel waiting in the wings for Diaz's eventual fall.

Unfortunately, the writers are too heavy handed with Diaz's character, and even though she transforms a little through the film, it is difficult to summon up enough liking for her to care whether she ends up happily ever after or not. In fact, I felt more empathy with goody-two-shoes Squirrel, and was more interested in how her rather limited story progressed through the film. This heavy handedness comes hot on the heels of Bridesmaids for me, and kind of concerned me. I had a similar, if slightly less so, reaction to the main character of that film - I didn't really empathise with her enough to care enough about the outcome.

I kind of wonder what these kinds of main characters are trying to say, and I wondered what this film was trying to say overall - that you succeed when you are empty-headed and superficial and care more about your looks than your profession (what a great message...)? Or that money and things are unnecessary and all you need is love? This film felt a little confused, as did Bridesmaids, about where it was ultimately going and what it wanted to do and say, trying to go all out for bad taste and shock, then tying it all up nicely with a sugary ending.
**

Cecil says: Well, I have to take part of the blame for Bea thinking that young kids don't go to the cinema anymore. Thing is, it's me who chooses the films where we are the youngest in the room. So, it was one of the first things I noticed on Saturday, sitting on the back row as ever, that we were probably the oldest couple in the room for a change. I guess we'd need to go to a few more vampire or pirates films to repeat this experience...

I have to confess I was with Bea in caring more about the Squirrel/Timberlake partnership than about the build-up to gym teacher and Camern Diaz getting it together.

I guess both of us probably fell more into the goodie-two-shoes mode at school, though I like to think that both of us have also learnt to appreciate a bit of a wicked side since we left our respective educations. So, while I could recognise the sensible advice Diaz gives the poor, earnest geeky 7th grader about lurv and girls, on the whole, as Bea says, she didn't come across as a very likeable character or as someone we should care about in particular.

I did notice, like Bea, that people in the audience laughed at different episodes and stories: the scene where the kids buy a 'rape kit' got them rolling in the aisles; and similarly the bit where the flatmate goes head over heels over a car parked in the parking lot got a big guffaw across the auditorium.

Thing is, I like slapstick in the Chaplin/Keaton genre, but in a modern-day drama, even one trying to be light-hearted about life, this felt mis-placed (especially as we came across almost that exact incident on our drive home: guy falls off his motorbike and bangs his head on rocks: he was nastily injured, and it just wasn't funny).

I don't know. Maybe I should take a chill pill and lighten up a bit. But don't get me wrong; I didn't spend the entire film tut-tutting or thinking how awful it all was. I enjoyed the story really. It just isn't a film I'd choose to go and see again. But sometimes, you don't have much choice.

**