Posts tagged Bad Teacher
“Young Adult” Is So Dark, It’s Black
Dec 23rd
“So Dark, It’s Black”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Young Adult, because of the successes this year of Bad Teacher and Horrible Bosses, could have been called Bad Graduate or Horrible Alumna.
Instead, it is called Young Adult, because the protagonist, Mavis Gary, is the ghostwriter of a series of young-adult novels, but also because even though she is 37, she acts as if she were still in high school, where she was the popular prom queen.
The film was directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, who previously worked together on the 2007 Juno, for which Cody won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and Mavis in this film has even been referred to as a grown-up Juno.
Charlize Theron plays Mavis, and when the movie opens, she is living unhappily in Minneapolis, where she learns that the wife of her high-school sweetheart, Buddy Slade, has just recently had a baby.
So, Mavis says, “It’s like he’s a hostage,” and she drives back to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota, where she intends to win Buddy back, rescue him, or whatever other euphemism she can think of for stealing Buddy away from his wife and newborn baby.
However, before Mavis can meet Buddy for an “innocent drink,” she encounters Matt Freehauf, whom she doesn’t remember from high school even though their lockers were right next to each other.
Matt was and still is a geek, he is crippled, and then Mavis remembers that he is the “hate-crime guy,” the boy from their high-school days who was brutally attacked and crippled by some jocks for being gay, even though Matt wasn’t gay.
Mavis tells Matt that she is back in town to get Buddy back, because they were meant to be together, and Matt tells Mavis what she already knows, that Buddy is married and his wife just had a baby.
Matt lives with his sister, has a distillery in his garage, and Mavis keeps calling on Matt for alcoholic friendship when her plans to steal Buddy away from his wife keep not working out, especially when Mavis makes a scene at the baby’s naming ceremony.
Mavis believes that most people in Mercury seem to be so happy with so little, and yet it is difficult for her to be happy.
Young Adult is a comedy, but it is so dark, it is black humor.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Bad Teacher” Worse Writers
Jul 29th
“Worse Writers”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Bad Teacher stars Cameron Diaz in the title role, because otherwise who would want to see a movie about a bad teacher?
Teachers are supposed to be good. Teachers are supposed to be helpful. Teachers are supposed to be able to teach difficult subjects to recalcitrant students.
And if you don’t know what “recalcitrant” means, then you just might have been one.
Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, a seventh-grade teacher at John Adams Middle School, and when the movie begins, it is the last day of school and she is being honored by the principal after having taught only one year.
Elizabeth is given a $37 gift certificate as a bonus, which doesn’t say as much about her teaching abilities as it does about the sad economic state of the education system in general.
Elizabeth tells her colleagues that she doesn’t need a blackboard or a classroom to set an example, but Elizabeth doesn’t plan to return in the fall to teach a second year at the school. She plans to marry her wealthy fiance and be taken care of for the rest of her life.
However, when Elizabeth goes home that day, her plans change completely, and three months later she is back at school to teach another year.
Well, “teach” is such a loaded word. Let’s just call it sitting at the front of her classroom and planning how she is going to pay for the boob job she believes will land her a rich husband.
In fact, Elizabeth starts showing movies about teachers instead of doing any teaching herself, and when the principal questions her teaching-by-movies technique, Elizabeth says, “I think that movies are the new books.”
Then when Justin Timberlake shows up at the school as Scott Delacorte, the new substitute teacher, Elizabeth learns that he is independently wealthy, and so she schemes to snag him as her sugar daddy, but nerdy Scott has hie eye on another teacher whom Elizabeth doesn’t get along with.
Now, of course there is a scene at a fund-raising car wash in which Elizabeth shows off her body that is like many other movies before this one, of course there is a major plot to get money that backfires, and of course there is a kind gym teacher attracted to Elizabeth whom she rejects.
Bad Teacher has worse writers.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Bad Teacher – Movie Trailer
Jun 29th
Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a foulmouthed, ruthless, and inappropriate teacher. She drinks, gets high, and can’t wait to marry a meal ticket to get out of her bogus day job. When she’s dumped by her fiancé, she sets her sights on a rich, handsome substitute (Justin Timberlake) while shrugging off the advances of the school gym teacher (Jason Segel). The consequences of her wild and outrageous schemes give her students, coworkers, and even herself an education like no other!
