Average Rating: 5.2/10
Reviews Counted: 171
Fresh: 75 | Rotten: 96
In spite of a promising concept and a charmingly brazen performance from Cameron Diaz, Bad Teacher is never as funny as it should be.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 25
In spite of a promising concept and a charmingly brazen performance from Cameron Diaz, Bad Teacher is never as funny as it should be.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 69,731
Some teachers just don't give an F. For example, there's Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz). She's foul-mouthed, ruthless, and inappropriate. She drinks, she gets high, and she can't wait to marry her meal ticket and get out of her bogus day job. When she's dumped by her fiancé, she sets her plan in motion to win over a rich, handsome substitute (Justin Timberlake) - competing for his affections with an overly energetic colleague, Amy (Lucy Punch). When Elizabeth also finds herself fighting off the
Jun 24, 2011 Wide
Oct 18, 2011
$100.3M
Sony Pictures
All Critics (171) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (78) | Rotten (96) | DVD (6)
If you can see past the dismal sexual politics of "Bad Teacher," which I couldn't, you might applaud the gall of a film that expends so little effort in forcing us to like its central character.
A frustrating mix of smart flash and smirking impudence.
Hard to root for such a selfish lead, but "Bad Teacher" has just enough politically incorrect humor to warrant a grade of B.
If you're looking for a funny comedy about a cynical, hard-partying school teacher transformed by his students into a paragon of pedagogical awesomeness, skip Bad Teacher and go rent School of Rock instead.
There are plenty of quality gags seeping through from the margins.
Has its lewd funniness, though not often enough to make it worthy of not only Bad Santa but, more to the point, School of Rock.
Bad Teacher doesn't quite get an F. But an acceptable C+ is pretty fair.
Kadan's direction is adequate with everything competently done, but there's nothing here that manages to make you laugh out loud. Could someone tell the current crop of Hollywood filmmakers to find some new jokes?
The problem isn't that Diaz's character is such a mean-spirited person, it's that her motives for being that way are completely contrived.It might have been a good short film, but that's about it.
Provided you're in the mood for salacious fare, this titillating teensploit does deliver the requisite number of raunchy rib ticklers to be worth the investment.
Sets back feminism a few centuries, but who cares. Because if we're talking self-criticism of the species, some women are let's face it, what can only be termed female chauvinists. And Diaz reinforces every single negative female stereotype with relish.
ena biastiko kai xiliopathmeno trabhgmeno sxoini kwmikoy romantzoy, panw sto opoio prepei na balei prwtagwnistria kai yposthriktikoys ermhneytes na kanoyn akrobatika gia na gemisei h eytyxws syntomh diarkeia toy panhgyrioy toy
Gross-out comedy big on cheap laughs, short on depth
The story is predictably thin and the jokes suitably unsophisticated, but the clever characterisations help this paint-by-numbers comedy limp over the line to "watchable".
Weirdly ill-conceived. Diaz is good and very believable as ... the most dislikable character I've encountered in a film in a long time ... [which] makes for a lousy movie.
The only way to understand this movie's argument about performance pay is to imagine Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker watching it.
She's not somewhat bad, she's not repentantly bad and she's certainly not sympathetically bad. Nope, she's just plain ol' bad. And that is a thing of rare beauty.
... more interesting (albeit disheartening) for what it seems to say about public-school teachers ...
This is too easy, but I'm going to do it anyway: Bad Teacher? Bad movie.
Somehow, surprisingly, without things ever turning schmaltzy, we end up caring about this selfish, foul-mouthed teacher, even if it's just a smidgen. And in hindsight, that's a pretty impressive feat.
While a few of Diaz's scenes with Timberlake and his gift for the deadpan seem as if they're going to amount to something, the script's dialogue fails them.
Falls down is in its flippant approach to an idea that doesn't have any traction beyond a TV skit, about a morally bankrupt teacher in high heels trying to pay her way to a boob job
Diaz manages to make Bad Teacher much more enjoyable than its mediocre script deserves
Ultimately, Bad Teacher is easy to like precisely because it doesn't try very hard to be liked.
Bad Teacher. Not so great movie. Even this talented cast couldn't help the lame storyline.
May 16, 2011Super Reviewer
Elizabeth Halsey is a gold-digging, foul-mouthed teacher who half-asses her way through her job and would rather spend her time drinking, smoking pot, and relying on a man's money to get her through life. When her fiancee dumps her, she's forced to return to the teaching job she thought she could leave behind. While
April 6, 2011Super Reviewer
| 25% | Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Par... |
| 83% | Puss in Boots |
| 94% | Moneyball |
| 59% | Real Steel |
| 84% | Contagion |
| 83% | Puss in Boots |
| 68% | Tower Heist |
| 90% | Martha Marcy May Marlene |
| 33% | London Boulevard |
| 17% | The Son of No One |
Puss in Boots and J. Edgar
50 best-reviewed Best Picture nominees
Ranking the 75 best animated movies ever!
Download the official PDF!