6 / 10
Official trailer
Jake Kasdan directed. Cameron Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, a teacher who’s only working at the school because her wealthy fiancé dumped her.
She spends most of the film either hung over, asleep at her desk, or scheming to seduce a wealthy substitute teacher played by Justin Timberlake so she can fund the breast augmentation she believes will get her back into the rich-fiancé market. Jason Segel plays the gym teacher who’s the only person in the film who likes Elizabeth as she is. Lucy Punch plays Amy Squirrel, the relentlessly cheerful teacher who is Elizabeth’s nemesis.
I laughed at this more than I expected to, and I also spent a fair bit of it wishing it were a better movie. Diaz is fearless and nasty in the right way, Lucy Punch is a hoot, and Segel is lovely every time the script remembers he exists. Then the last act goes soft and throws away the edge that made the first hour worth watching.
The film made approximately two hundred and sixteen million dollars worldwide on a twenty million dollar budget.
It was one of the more profitable comedies of 2011. The reviews were mixed. The film occupies a weird position among early-2010s comedies, sitting between Bridesmaids (also 2011) and the more conventional rom-coms of the period without quite belonging to either category.
Cameron Diaz
Diaz was thirty-eight during filming. The performance is committed in ways that her previous comedy work hadn’t always been. She plays Elizabeth as unpleasant, not as the slightly unpleasant rom-com protagonist who has a heart of gold under the surface. The character is petty, selfish, and largely uninterested in her students through the runtime. The film doesn’t redeem her until the final act, and even the redemption is partial.
The risk of the performance is the risk of the script. Audiences expect comedy protagonists to be likable. Diaz plays Elizabeth as unlikable for ninety minutes and trusts the audience to find her interesting anyway. The strategy partly works.
The film is funnier when Diaz commits to Elizabeth’s actual nastiness than when the script softens her. The softening third act is the weakest part of the film.
That softening is where the film loses me. I was enjoying Elizabeth as a monster, and the moment the script starts nudging her toward decency, the jokes go limp. I’d have let her stay awful right to the credits.
For Writers
An unlikable protagonist can carry a comedy if the writer commits to the unlikability. Bad Teacher works best when Elizabeth is at her worst. The film weakens when the script tries to redeem her. The lesson is that audiences will tolerate longer than writers expect with characters who refuse to be sympathetic. Comedy of bad behavior usually fails because the writers lose nerve. The funniest version of these characters is the version that doesn’t flinch.
The Gym Teacher Subplot
Jason Segel’s Russell, the gym teacher, is the moral center of the film and is barely in it. He’s the only character who sees Elizabeth clearly and likes her anyway. His scenes with Diaz are some of the warmest in the film, partly because Segel brings his brand of unforced sincerity to the role. The script eventually pairs them in the third act after Elizabeth has failed at her seduction of the rich substitute and has been forced to acknowledge that her plan was bad.
The Segel character would have made the film better had he been on screen more.
The script keeps cutting back to Elizabeth’s schemes when the more interesting material would have been the gym teacher orbiting her and waiting for her to notice him. The film makes its choice. The choice is structurally defensible. It’s also the choice that leaves the best material undeveloped.
I wanted a lot more of Russell. Segel plays him with such easy warmth that every cut back to Elizabeth’s scheming felt like leaving the good party for the bad one. I’d have traded half the Timberlake material for another ten minutes of the gym teacher.
For Writers
A supporting character who’s more interesting than the protagonist is a signal that the writer has gotten the central focus wrong. Bad Teacher would be a better film if it were about Russell observing Elizabeth instead of about Elizabeth scheming. The lesson is that when your audience’s favorite character isn’t the protagonist, you’ve made a structural error. Either raise the supporting character or rebuild the protagonist to be the source of the audience’s interest.
The R Rating
The film is R-rated. The rating is the source of much of its comedy. Elizabeth says things to her students, to her colleagues, and to administrators that no PG-13 teacher movie could include. The rating allows the script to commit to Elizabeth’s specific awfulness without softening it for younger audiences. That’s where most of my laughs came from. Hearing a teacher say those things to a room full of kids is funny in a way no family-friendly version could manage, and the studio was smart not to lose its nerve on that part.
The downside is that the audience for an R-rated school comedy is necessarily smaller than the audience for a PG-13 version. The film’s commercial success suggests there was enough audience to make the rating worth it. The artistic argument is that PG-13 would have made the film into a different and worse work. The rating was the right choice for the material.
For Writers
A rating, like any other audience constraint, should match the material. Bad Teacher’s R rating is part of why the film works. A PG-13 version would have softened the comedy to the point of irrelevance. The lesson is that the constraints you accept on your work shape what the work can be. If your material requires intensity, don’t soften it to broaden the audience. The audience for soft material is also the audience that won’t be especially interested.
Craft Note
Cameron Diaz commits to playing an unlikable protagonist without the standard redemption beats. Elizabeth Halsey doesn’t soften across the film. She gets what she wants and the script lets her keep it. The performance refuses to ask for audience sympathy and the comedy works because Diaz commits to the character’s actual selfishness. R-rated comedy depends on protagonists the script doesn’t flinch from. Likability isn’t the goal. Commitment is.
Is Bad Teacher worth watching?
It’s a 6 because the good half is good and the rest is ordinary.
Diaz commits to Elizabeth’s nastiness, Lucy Punch is excellent as Amy Squirrel, and Segel is wasted on the edges of the story. The soft third act undoes a lot of what worked, and I came away liking pieces of the film more than the whole. Watch it for Diaz, Punch and Segel, and don’t expect the ending to keep its teeth.
