Bad Teacher (Thursday, July 7, 2011) (51)

So Bad Teacher is a movie directed by Jake Kasdan (le fils de Larry) with a highly-praised script written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (whoever they are). It has all the makings of an interesting, dark and biting comedy, something that could possibly be as brilliant and enjoyable as Hesher or Observe and Report. Alas, it is not any of those things - it's totally banal, painfully unfunny and hardly hard-hitting.

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a good-looking gold-digger who only hopes to catch a man who can pay for her expensive tastes and buy her a new rack. When she's dumped by her millionaire fiance she sets her sights on a substitute, Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) at the middle school where she's a homeroom teacher. Somehow Scott is a millionaire and a perfect pedagodge. Whatever.

Meanwhile there's a goody-two-shoes teacher, Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), who wants to be friends with Elizabeth until she finds out her motives and then becomes her enemy, and a gym teacher who lusts after Liz, but isn't hot enough for her (Jason Segal). Liz figures out a way to use her status as a public school teacher to extort money and buy her new tits herself.

The story and dialogue is so broadly written that the jokes come off as mostly dull and moderately uncouth, but never particularly dirty or bitter. At some point, Elizabeth says to a guy "I want to suck your dick like I'm angry at it"... which is a quotable line, but nothing particularly creative or pathetic. It's just broad and blue, meant to make the over-50-set re-adjust in their seats. (The single best line has to do with a guy being called "Faggy Hitler," which is simple, offensive and hilarious... but not overdone.)

I think this story suffers from not knowing what it really aught to be or is. It's not very dirty, but also not at all a "family comedy". It's somewhere in between; neither fish nor foul (fowl). It is a bit too filthy to star Tim Allen or Kevin James, but much too ordinary (and much too complicated, by the way) to be really interesting or exhilarating.

Cameron Diaz is a banal as a comedienne as the manila folder she resembles - mostly we're just forced to watch her because she's a frat-boy's idea of a "hot chick," having never really shown the chops we've always been promised. (Being John Malkovich is very funny, but I give most of the credit for that to Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.) Beige.

Does there really have to be a happy Hollywood ending in this story? Are we so dumb and boring that we have to see right winning over wrong? Pfffft.

Stars: 1 of 4