Bad Teacher

A shallow, self-absorbed woman (Cameron Diaz) gets dumped by her rich fiancé when he sees what she really is, forcing her back to the middle-school teaching job she thought she was getting rid of. There are some hearty laughs in Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg’s script, and a stray guffaw or two thanks to Diaz and a resourceful supporting cast—Lucy Punch, Justin Timberlake, John Michael Higgins, Phyllis Smith, Jason Segel. But much of the fun is frittered away by a general aimlessness which Jake Kasdan’s workmanlike direction is unable to bring into sharper focus. The movie is more interesting (albeit disheartening) for what it seems to say about public-school teachers: The ones with any brains hate their jobs and despise their students, while the supposedly dedicated ones are simply silly-ass twits.