BAD TEACHER

"It's not that all teachers are bad. It's just that good teachers are rare." This was from a review I read of this film starring Cameron Diaz as a VERY bad teacher who acts like she would've been better suited as a stripper, a porn star or a serial killer as she drinks, smokes dope, throws basketballs at her students and otherwise treats not only her students but her fellow teachers like, well, like absolute shit. About the only person she warms up to is a new teacher played by Justin Timberlake who acts like well, like a complete dork whom Diaz is primarily "interested" in because his family has money, which she needs to get her new boob job, which, by the way, motivates her to become a better teacher--or at least a not-so-bad one--when she discovers that the teacher with the highest grade-point average on the standardized test every year gets an extra bonus, which, of course, she "needs" to pay for said boob job. Most other reviews I've read of this film pointed out how Cameron's character doesn't "change" at the end of this flick like so many other flicks where the lead character has a life-changing moment or whatever (like, for instance, in the earlier-reviewed A Christmas Carol) and that's what the reviewers found so, shall we say, refreshing about this film. Well, actually, that's not entirely true as Diaz's character winds up NOT getting her boob job and ends up turning down Justin's dorky teacher and instead winds up with the lowly gym teacher played by Jason Segel. Of course, all this happens after she sets up her rival teacher played by Lucy Punch--whom dates Justin's teacher until she finds out that he and Diaz had literally dry-humped each other on a school field trip--on a phony drug charge when she finds out that Diaz's teacher had cheated on the standardized tests (of course!). Best line in the movie comes from Cameron after she intially "retires" from teaching at the beginning of the film and she goes home and tells her soon-to-be-ex-fiance how he'd better get "hard" and how she's about to "suck your dick like I'm mad at it!" Best scene in the film is the car wash scene when Cameron shows up in a tied-off flannel shirt and short-shorts at a school fundraiser so, again, she can embezzle the money to go towards her new tit job. Well, that scene and the other scene where Cameron is feeling up the plastic surgeon's nurse's nude tits in his office to check out his, um, work. Blackboard Jungle this flick AIN'T! A sidenote: What really got to me about this movie wasn't so much the movie but the movie trailer which started out by pointing out how the U.S. was #1 in education for about fifty years and now ranks at #17 and then seemingly proudly boasts, "And here's why!" Then it cuts to the scene of Cameron Diaz chucking basketballs at her students. I know this is just a "comedy" flick, but is this something we should be taking so lightly that the educational system in this country is SO fucked up that they're making "comedies" about it? Just saying!