Bad Teacher

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Bad Teacher's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Bad Teacher completed by The Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 25 July 2011.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines.

ACCM review

This review of the movie Bad Teacher contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

Bad Teacher’s selling phrase is “Some teachers just don’t give an ‘F’” Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz) is a middle school teacher who only became a teacher for the ‘short’ working hours and long holidays. Her ambition is to marry a rich man so she can live the high life without having to lift a finger! After her rich fiancé dumps her, she has to go back to teaching after the summer holidays. Clearly not wanting to teach, she shows her students DVDs while she sleeps and drinks in class.

Elizabeth meets a rich substitute teacher, Scott (Justin Timberlake), and makes it her goal to make him her meal ticket out of teaching. Scott is dedicated to his job and the students, so Elizabeth tries to pretend that she also cares. Her super conscientious colleague, Amy (Lucy Punch) is also vying for Scott’s affections.

Elizabeth decides to get a breast enlargement as she believes that will secure Scott’s love, but she can’t afford it on a teacher’s salary. She steals, cheats, drugs and lies in an attempt to raise the money for the operation although the gym teacher, Russell (Jason Segel) who is attracted to Elizabeth, says it is unnecessary.

Themes

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Bullying; alcohol and drug use; stealing; body image

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie including:

• Elizabeth berates her students saying that they are stupid and hopeless, she also marks their papers with “f*cking moron”.
• A man driving a scooter runs into a parked car. He then continues to damage the car by kicking it and pulling off a mirror, then hobbles away
• Elizabeth lines her students up and asks them questions about their work. Those who get the answer wrong have a ball thrown at them quite forcefully. One student has a large mark on his face and another has a ball thrown at his crotch. The students who answer correctly throw the ball at their teacher. One student is instructed by the gym teacher to ‘get a better stance’ before throwing the ball directly into Elizabeth’s face
• One of the movies shown to the students shows a man attacked by a person in a mask and slashed with a knife
• Elizabeth wipes an apple with poison ivy and gives it to Amy. She is shown with welts all over her face
• A verbal argument where the people argue about accusations about stealing and cheating. Those involved swear and a woman lunges at another and needs to be restrained. She is then taken away in handcuffs by the police under suspicion of taking drugs.

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

As well as the violent scenes described above, young children may be confused or disturbed by seeing a teacher behaving in such an unusual way and treating students so badly.

Aged eight to thirteen

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Younger children in this age group may also be confused or disturbed by Elizabeth’s treatment of her students.

Over the age of thirteen

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Children in this age group are unlikely to be disturbed by anything in this film

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

• Jim Beam whisky
• Mercedes Benz

Sexual references

There are many sexual references in this movie, including:

• A female teacher enters the men’s toilet to have a conversation and sits on a urinal. The men in the toilet have their pants around their ankles
• There are many discussions about breast implants
• Sexual terms are used throughout the movie e.g. f**k, suck your dick, sit on his face, a good dicking
• A father of a student tells Elizabeth that she has ‘rocking body’
• A man tells Elizabeth he wants to “rock her vagina”
• Elizabeth makes a sexually suggestive comment about oral sex to her fiancé
• Elizabeth says that she caught a student being “jerked off” by another student. The boy then pulls out a bra (which was given to him by Elizabeth in order to silence the bullies)
• Elizabeth tells her co-workers that she caught her ex-fiancé sleeping with another man, with a dog and with his own sister
  Elizabeth replies to a colleague’s invitation to be friends with “I don’t eat muff pie”
  

Nudity and sexual activity

There is nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

• A fully clothed man and woman simulate sex on a bed. They are shown in a number of positions before the man yells “I’m close”. The woman gets off the bed and the man has a wet patch on his pants.
• At a cosmetic surgeon’s office, Elizabeth is shown the breasts of a nurse. She asks to touch them and is shown fondling them with the doctor watching.
• A number of Elizabeth’s outfits worn at school including short skirts and tight dresses, reveal her legs and bra.
• Men watch Elizabeth as she provocatively splashes water on herself - a policeman crashes his car and another man is shown to have a bulge in his pants.
• Elizabeth seduces a man and goes back to his office. He says he wants to “f**k her against the desk” Elizabeth puts a drug into his wine to make him pass out. We later see semi-naked photos of the man on a photocopier and a desk.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

• Elizabeth smokes cigarettes.
• Elizabeth’s room mate asks if she wants to “get wasted” and he leaves a bottle of Jim Beam.
• Elizabeth is caught by a student smoking a marijuana pipe in her car. She tells her it is for medicinal purposes.
• A male teacher asks Elizabeth if she wants to “get high”. They smoke marijuana and encourage another teacher to have a try
• Elizabeth has a stash of alcohol in her desk at school.
• Elizabeth seduces a man at a bar after many drinks including shots. She then adds drugs to a glass of wine in order to make him unconscious.
• A police sniffer dog comes into school after an accusation of drugs. The dog finds drugs in a teacher’s drawer with a false bottom.

Coarse language

There is frequent coarse language in this movie, including:

• bitches
• suck your dick
• bullshit
• tits
• f**k
• f*cking troll
• dick breath
• ass
• jerking off

The movie's message

Bad Teacher is a comedy in questionable taste. The crude humour, coarse language, themes, drug use and sexual references make it unsuitable for children and younger teens.

This is not a movie that aims to leave people with a single important message to take away, but it certainly involves many behaviours and choices that raise issues for discussion.

The possible messages to take from the movie are that

• True compatibility with someone goes much deeper than the way someone looks and how much money they have.
• Teaching is a profession not to be taken lightly and teachers have a crucial influence on their students’ overall wellbeing and development.
  
  

Parents may also wish to discuss:

• Substance abuse – the impact of substance abuse, people taking drugs while responsible for minors
• Elizabeth’s other questionable behaviours including stealing, drugging another person in order to steal a document, lying, implicating someone else in a crime
• Cosmetic surgery