Comedy is better when it's not heartwarming. Possibly because in most film comedies, especially romantic comedies, the characters are sociopaths. That's not really a problem, but those movies seem to lack the self awareness to realize how unlikable and abnormal their supposedly likable and normal protagonists are. A hip twenty-or-thirty-something with a gigantic apartment and a job at a newspaper or a magazine or something that totally still exists in the 21st century who talks about their life constantly in sweeping pronouncements and who hatches zany schemes to get love or keep love or test love and they're always lying and they're selfish and they don't know what they want and they use people, they just use people endlessly. Why is this always the hero/heroine of a comedy? Better question, why do those movies seem to think those people are normal and/or likable? Anyway, this movie is different from that, and better for it. It's about a bad teacher spoiler.
Cameron Diaz plays a money grubbing whore who quits teaching to marry a rich guy, one of the Germans from Beerfest, the one who was also on Mad Men. He changes his mind when his mother points out how despicable Diaz is, so she is forced backed into teaching. She doesn't really have any backstory on why she's such a bitch, and by the end of the movie she is only slightly nicer. This is one best parts of the film and also one of the vague ways it is similar to Bad Santa despite involving none of the same cast or crew. She's just a bad teacher.
The plot of the movie doesn't take up too much time or get in the way of any jokes. And there are no big finales with lots of people yelling and stuff happening to wrap up all the plot threads (these aren't usually very funny). She wants to get breast implants and saves up for them the whole movie but then doesn't get them. She wants to marry or at least date Justin Timberlake because he is a millionaire heir to a watchmaking fortune but then after pursuing him for so long she finally can't stand what a creepy weirdo he is anymore so she settles for slacker stoner gym teacher Jason Segal who is obviously more simpatico to her anyway. Thank the maker, there are no courtroom scenes, which turn up in more comedies than they should considering they aren't usually funny.
Diaz battles against the teacher across the hall, an overly cheerful parody of every teacher who had so much fun that their kids didn't have any, a woman named Amy Squirrel played by Lucy Punch. Which of those names is weirder? Squirrel tries to win Timberlake over before Diaz can and tries to get her fired for being a... bad teacher. Diaz emerges victorious through witness intimidation and evidence tampering. That is so much better than a stupid speech about learning a lesson or whatever.
John Michael Higgins appears as the principal, a man who loves dolphins, and shitting in peace. Molly Shannon appears for between zero and one scene as some kid's mom and Sony VP Kevin Butler is some other kid's dad. Eric Stonestreet plays Diaz's roommate who doesn't seem to know anything about her or the criminal activities he agrees to. Thomas Lennon appears as a bureaucrat that Diaz drugs/robs to help her students cheat on a test and Phyllis from The Office plays a woman so happy to be in Diaz's orbit that she seems blissfully unaware of her shabby treatment from her. Timberlake is a strange duck is this movie. His part feels like it was underwritten so that whatever comedian they eventually cast could go nuts with it. But then they cast Timberlake, and he kinda overplays the smarmy normality (at first) of the guy so instead of being funny he's just kind of a creepy weirdo long before he's revealed as a creepy weirdo.
Dave 'Gruber' Allen has a small role as a teacher, and is involved in probably my favorite joke in the movie. During a faculty meeting he yells out, apropos of nothing, 'Four score and seven years ago!' and then falls asleep. Everybody just ignores him and continues the meeting. I don't keep exact count or anything, but I laughed at Bad Teacher more than Hangover Part 2. If you want a great comedy about a bad person, watch Bad Santa. If you want a good comedy about a bad person, watch Bad Teacher.
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