While Bad Teacher is a stupid movie about stupid people there is a certain pleasure in seeing people behave so badly without any consequences.

Cameron Diaz plays our title character and she really is a lousy teacher, unlikable as well as lazy, selfish and crass. Her class watches endless videos while she snoozes, boozes and does drugs and never teaches anything, not even bothering to learn her students’ names.

Her big ambition in life is to get breast implants, which she thinks will fulfil her other ambition in life, which is to marry a sugar daddy. She fixes on substitute teacher Justin Timberlake, whom she thinks has money, while ignoring the gym teacher (Jason Segel) who is attracted to her.

Then she finds out that there’s a large financial bonus for the teacher whose class does the best in final exams and she actually tries teaching, but has to resort to skullduggery to win the award.

Most of the characters in this film display the intelligence of a fencepost, even the principal of the school doesn’t seem to notice Diaz never actually teaches.

Adolescent males will especially enjoy Bad Teacher because of scenes of Diaz in a skimpy outfit at a car wash fundraiser and of breasts at the breast clinic, plus some bathroom and erection humour.

As she shown in movies with better scripts like There’s Something About Mary, Diaz can carry a comedy, but not this time.

Rating: two deer out of five

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Alf Cryderman is a Red Deer freelance writer and old movie buff.