Bad Teacher

Movie: Bad Teacher

Genre: comedy

Synopsis: Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a junior high school teacher.  Her immediate goal in life is to acquire enough money to pay for a boob job to achieve her ultimate goal . . . marry someone rich.  Teaching kids is the last thing she cares about. She latches onto the new geeky – and rich – teacher, Scott (Justin Timberlake).  Fellow teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) is the resident uber-teacher.  She has two goals – to land Scott as a boyfriend and to get Elizabeth fired.  And . . . there is Jason Seagal playing the sweet doofus gym teacher who has the hots for Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is willing to stoop to any depths to get her man and her boob job and Amy is equally willing to sink as low as she needs to in order to discredit Elizabeth.

My two cents: Not as bad as I expected, but not exactly Oscar material.  Justin Timerlake played his character well, but the character was really out there.  This was the first movie I have seen featuring Lucy Punch.  She was a LOT of fun to watch.  She absolutely nailed the fanatically dedicated and unbelievably perky and cheerful school teacher who is actually on the brink of a meltdown.  And let’s not forget Phyllis Smith (The Office) portrayal of teacher Lynn Davies. I thought that she stole every scene she was in.

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