I was vaguely tempted to do another 'spike takes on' style point by point review. Two things keep me from that: I was underwhelmed enough by the movie that I can't be assed to do so... think about that when you re-read my mutant chronicles post one day... , and more importantly, I'm not getting enough sleep to do long ass posts late into the night for all you punk ass mofos.

So, suck it and make do with my random rambling bullshit.

First up: The director, or more importantly the light guy, apparently hates Cameron Diaz.  Look. She's forty, okay?  She's a damn good looking forty, without nearly as much artificiality as some actresses in her age range. So constant brilliant white light, dark clothes and garish lipstick only remind us just how 'no young' she really is.  There was some broke ass dueling piano movie that bored housewives loved in the eighties, and I think it was billy crystal that said as part of his 'Im not really an asshole, and I do love you' shpiel that always works in these things that 'no one looks that good in direct sunlight' or some non-sense.  Seriously.

Compounding the issue:  The character Ms Diaz is portraying is clearly in the 'young and stupid' stage of life.  We are talking early twenties here, folks. Few people make it to their thirties that still think partying that hard and living that desperately from false high to false high is the way to go. Those that DO make it that far tend to look it.  I'm not saying Cameron was horribly miscast (She's ALWAYS horribly miscast, unless her contribution to the film is looking scorchingly hot in a red dress coming in out of the rain... Look, I'm sure she's a sweetheart, and I'm equally sure she's taken a bunch of classes and may EVEN care about her craft deeply.  I'm also saying that she can't act her way out of a wet paper sack AND lacks the sort of charisma that lets other equally talentless actors to mesmerize you as they play themselves in role after role.   Look, I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that Diaz put some of her best work up on this film. Seriously.  She actressed her little heart out.  However, she hasn't exactly defied expectations of her ability.).
Now, if the actress can believeably look in her twenties, hell even her early thirties, thats one less thing that we have to stress our imaginations with, right? So when the director/light guy makes her look every one of her years in nearly every shot, BAM! Suspension of disbelief shot.

Now, I'm willing to buy that this isn't cruelty, but simply a movie making talent roughly on par with Cameron's 'Acting'.  Case in point: The Car Wash heavily featured in all the trailers.  A leggy, tan blonde in tight shorts, heels and a lot of soapy water grinding on a car is a movie making tradition stretching back at least forty years (Hmm.... coincidence?). Thus, we know a bit about  how it should look. The trailers pretty much have it right.

The movie? Not so much. Look, Tawny Kitaen can roll around on the hood of a car in a ridiculous dress for five fucking minutes and make it look hot, Cameron Diaz should be able to slither over another car for five seconds and not make it look horribly staged and awkward. I don't blame the blonde for this one, however. Straight up shit editing.   What can I say? I'm a connisuer.*


The thing that keeps me out of comedy movies for the most part is the very very VERY awkward characterizations.  Look, I've gone back and rewatched shit from the seventies and eighties.  Goofy and off beat characters existed back then, sure.  But not EVERY SINGLE FUCKING CHARACTER in EVERY SINGLE FUCKING FILM!!!!

Sweet fucking jesus christ on a crutch!

Lets run down some of the supporting cast here:

Amy Squirrel, the rival teacher: At one point she is so excited to find an apple on her desk that she all but dry fucks the shit out of it in front of the class. Her rivalry with the 'bad teacher' is so intense that she is driven to near apoplexy on frequent occasions. Look, I don't really need to describe her character's every actions, but lets just say she's 'comedy enthusiastic' about her job and hyper-organized in her role as the 'best teacher'. At one point she walks into the mens bathroom in her eagerness to report on Cameron's misdeeds to the principle.

The principle: Seriously, this man has a fetishistic love of dolphins that, were we talking about children, would have his ass investigated down to the very nuclei of his cells over concerns for pedophilia.  We literally know three things about him: He loves dolphins. He takes one shit a day (while, amazingly, reading a  dolphin magazine... go figure!), and he is a doormat boss who wants everyone to be family and not to rock the boat.

The Roommate: Cameron's essentially nameless fat retarded roommate, found on craigslist. She sends him out as a thug (on his vespa), and after crashing into the targets car has to stop and think, during the argument... buy reading the words off the palms of his hand.  

The Test Administrator: Nebbish loser beaurocrat who is a forty year old virgin, unloved. Probably sucks at his job, but is none the less ridiculously punctilious and uptight.

The ex-fiance: Totally dominated by his mother. Possibly closeted and with some sad pathetic hobby that he literally cares about more than wether or not his wife to be is a gold digger (collecting dolls?).

The New Husband to be (Justin Timberlake): You've probably seen him in the trailers, he's worse in the movie. When Diaz finally 'gets him', and they 'fuck' in his hotel room near the end of the movie... its straight up dry humping with their clothes on.  Why? Because he's a hollow caricature of a character with a lot of weird personality quirks that don't make a lot of sense and are never explained.  He's supposed to be shallow and possibly self absorbed, though in a vague, egoless way. We got that. He's a vacuous beauty queen who only wants world peace.  Um... world peace and ending hunger. Yeah.



Yeah. The only believeable characters are the 'real' love interest (Rather than the potential wallet... I mean husband) in the gym coach, the bad teacher (strangely enough) and the fucking kids.   I should say 'remotely'.  

Now, I'm gonna steal a bit from a much smarter review than I care to make. Maybe two bits, yeah.

First: despite the various outcries this is a deeply feminist movie.  Also, (my own take) slightly, subversively, conservative politically.  I won't bother to explain my own take much other than its apparent lampooning of the teacher's union/public sector throughout the film, the not at all tongue in cheek reference to medical marijuana being entirely for fun and JT's almost madlibbed 'And abortion is bad' outburst during a set up for the love triangle that dominates the film.  Uncontested, and even agreed with.

But for the feminist take:  Apparently a lot of internet ink has been spilled about the decidedly unfeminist, even possibly sexist take on women that this film has.

Balderdash and bullshit.

First, with the sole exception of Jason Segel's gym teacher, every single character worth a damn in the film is female. That's a minor point, actually, but important. Men are entirely relegated to supporting roles, and are generally weak willed and foolish, utterly at the mercy of the much more complexly drawn female characters.  That is not quite as minor a point, but I'm still working my way up to the big one.

See: For 80 years in cinema, and countless centuries of theater and storytelling we've had anti-heroes. Bad dudes who do bad things remorselessly, and yet win out in the end. In comedy they are more or less officially known as the Rogue, and their bad deeds tend to be, well, roguish rather than out and out vicious.

Very few, if any, major motion pictures have ever cast a woman in this role. Its a man's role.

Well. Cameron Diaz, for all her faults as an actress, is pretty much it. She's the rogue. She lies, cheats, steals, even drugs and blackmails, all with the intent of marrying a man she doesn't love so she can live off of his money.

And she never pays for her sins.  She doesn't get caught, she turns the tables on her only rival and challenger, who is hoist by her own petard for trying to out rogue the rogue you  might say, and generally sails off the winner of the film.

I won't go any deeper than that in my defense. Seriously. She gets to totally inhabit a male dominated role without any apologies or explanations or excuses, and for the most part the only people to complain are the ones who are saying its misogynistic and sexist for a woman to try to do that... Seriously: Its not my point, I'm just going to regurgitate it the way I read it.


The second point that's not mine (though I will say that I can own this one just as much... seeing as I reached it on my own as well... if not as well fleshed out) is structural.

As the rogue usually gets to win the film, so to speak, its traditional for there to be a karmic balancing along the way. Not always to the point of redemption, but certainly growth and reparations for the worst excesses along the way.

Bad Teacher doesn't quite do that.  I mean, they GET that its supposed to happen, but they fail to execute.  The Bad Teacher gives the sensitive, and recently humilated, kid a few life lesson pointers, and pays his way into the cool kids club with her bra. Then she makes three good choices that she's been rejecting all along (no to the fake breasts, no to Timberlake, yes to the gym teacher), and gets away with all her crimes scott free and with a cool new job as the guidance councilor... which is almost a fourth good choice as she actually seems to want to be at work.  She only slightly mitigates her previous bad behavior and, more importantly: There is no arc. It just sort of all happens at the end of the film.  

The thing is there is some set up there.  I mean: She spends christmas with the sensitive kids family... where she steals a dolphin statue to use as a bribe for the principle.   This is a scene where, even if she does something bad we have to see her starting, perhaps, to wake up to how fucked up her life is or something.  Now, again, Ms Diaz has all the acting potential of a really pretty rock, so maybe we can blame her for not giving us that 'light in the eyes' or whatever the fuck a good actor might inject where the script and director failed to deliver, but no: She looks bored and uninterested and frankly a little peeved to be swagging free food and company.

Secondly: When motivated to win prize money she becomes a very excellent, if very very unorthodox (and thus still "Bad") teacher.  

Which, of course, goes no where.  She doesn't win the prize on merit but by stealing the test. The students don't awaken some dim awareness of her potential in her, or what have you...

She has three scenes with the sensitive geek mooning over the pretty, popular girl. THREE. In the first scene she tells him to suck it up, he's a loser. In the second scene she tells him to suck it up, he's a loser (then she steals his dolphin statue!), in the third scene she lets him go through a hideously painful declaration of awkward, unromantic love, then when he runs off in shame inexplicably chases him down, explains to him that he'll score in college and gives him her bra so he can be cool. Where is the arc? Where is the build up to her suddenly getting that the pretty-popular girl is actually missing out? I mean: this is our apogee, this is where the plot threads all come together!  This is where she rejects shallow loveless money grubbing for the cool dude she relates to!

Wait. No, that actually happens about five-ten minutes later, after her rival nearly makes her pay for her MANY sins up to this point... which she avoids only by chance and aforementioned blackmail.  After she avoids her come-uppance through the apparent stupidity of everyone else in the room (pretty much literally...).

ONLY THEN does she reject the Timberlake dryhumper (or wet humper in the movies thankfully solo body-function joke), and goes after the gym teacher.


I rate the  movie a resounding Meh.