Bad Teacher

Directed by: Jake Kasdan

Written by: Gene Stupnitsky, Lee Eisenberg

Put simply, "Bad Teacher" is bad. Awful. But more on that later.

Basically, the movie follows a school year (or so) in the life (or low-life) of teacher Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz), as she slogs through teaching until she can find a way to make more money. When she finds out that one of the substitute teachers (Timberlake) is heir to a massive fortune, she sets her sights on him only to be foiled by another young teacher (Punch). When Halsey finds out that there is a bonus paid to the teacher with the highest scores in the district, she sets a plan in motion both to get the bonus and win back the wealthy heir. And everything seems to be going along fine, except for her nagging conscience in the voice of the PE teacher (Segel).

This movie was terrible. The plot was paper thin, which is fine for a comedy - comedies don't need to have complex story lines. But comedies do need to be funny. And when it doesn't have a plot and it isn't funny, it's hard to classify it as anything but bad.

Beyond being bad, the film failed to capitalize on the good features that it did have. Namely, the supporting cast. Justin Timberlake's character was basically a one-gag player, but he received a massive amount of screen time to continue repeating the same ditzy antics. Meanwhile, Jason Segel, probably the funniest actor cast in the film, was wasted by being relegated to a largely unfunny background role. The same goes for Phyllis Smith - who has shown her humor chops on "The Office - and John Michael Higgins. Both were very funny, but only given a few lines in scattered scenes. Meanwhile, Cameron Diaz, who has known to be funny from time to time, basically phoned this role in.

Of course, the real flaw in the film starts with the title. For a movie called "Bad Teacher," there is surprisingly little material having to do with teachers, teaching, or schools in general. The word "teacher" could have been replaced by just about any other profession, and the film would have been exactly the same. This is unfortunate because as "The Simpsons" and "South Park" have shown, year after year, schools can be great sources of incredibly funny material. But the number of scenes that actually relied on the school setting or the characters being teachers were so small as to be insignificant.

Now, I'm not the type of person to demand money back after seeing a movie. I go in to the theater fully aware of what I'm getting into, for better or for worse, and commit myself to watching.

But I pretty much want my money back.