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Taught in the Act

When I think of Cameron Diaz, two words come to mind: hot and funny. Alas, she has not had a good run recently. Between "Knight and Day" and "The Green Hornet", her latest have been underwhelming. So it only makes sense that her new comedy, "Bad Teacher" brings it back to the basics. Cameron Diaz as a super hot middle school teacher with a tenuous (at best) grasp of ethical behavior? Sounds like fun! Unfortunately, it doesn't work as well as you'd like.

Elizabeth Halsey (Ms Diaz) is a golddigger. She's superficial and manipulative and not even terribly circumspect about it. She's also a middle school teacher - a job she neither likes nor is any good at. What made her want to teach impressionable tweens? Who on Earth hired her to do so? Such mysteries are never explained. Suffice it to say she starts the school year off by showing "Stand And Deliver" on the first day. Uhhh, yeah.

Elizabeth's fondest dream is to take her A-cups to the next level. And kudos to Cameron Diaz for being such a good sport about being so flat-chested. As she does all sorts of morally bankrupt things to meet the $10k sticker price, she also battles it out with her arch-nemesis: perennially perky Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch). The two women couldn't be more different; much of the movie consists of them trying to mess with each other.

While all of this is going on, Elizabeth, who is already fixated on her boobs, becomes completely enamored of hunky substitute teacher Scott, who is a boob. As Scott, Justin Timberlake really plays it down here (once again proving that he's actually a pretty good actor), even going so far as to do a convincingly bad job eeking out a terrible love song. Scott is nothing if not clueless, and remains fairly oblivious to Elizabeth's advances, opting instead for Amy. You can guess how that goes.

In a role secondary to all of this action, Jason Segel, as gym teacher Russell Gettis, makes this movie more than just fluff. He is everything Elizabeth doesn't want and he is relentless in his low-key pursuit of her. Whether she likes it or not, they're kindred spirits - although he only bends the rules where she smashes indiscriminately through them.

Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, both former producers of "The Office", penned the script, which often feels like it's been over-edited - it never quite comes together. That Elizabeth should do all of the things she does to achieve her goals is what it is, but it's not at all in proportion with the repercussions. One subplot - involving the school bonus for the teacher whose class gets the highest test scores on the annual standardized tests - was so unsatisfactorily resolved that I kept waiting for it to come back again. Jake Kasdan's direction ("Walk Hard") is okay, but his incredibly talented cast isn't fantastically used. Cameron Diaz is in pretty much every scene; Jason Segel and Justin Timberlake could've added more.

There are no lessons to be learned here. No moral thread runs through and reminds you that lying, cheating and otherwise manipulating the world to get your way is bad. There are laugh out loud moments... and thankfully none of the humor strays too far into the cringe-worthy. What you see is what you get: a few hot actors, a few funny lines, some amusing situations. "Bad Teacher" is not going to teach you anything, but it will probably make you chuckle.