I might as well say the red band trailer for this gave me a lot more laughs than the movie itself. That would probably be because most of the gags I saw in the red band trailer were not in the actual movie. Do I still think it's a good movie overall? Here's my review.
Cameron Diaz plays a teacher named Elizabeth Halsey who has to return to her regular day job of teaching at a middle school after her plan to live off some rich guy goes wrong. The way it's setup in the beginning I can say is hilarious. She doesn't give a crap about the students; she doesn't actually teach them and just has them watch movies in class all day; and her primary goal is to find a new rich guy to live off of. That's where Justin Timberlake's character of Scott Delacorte comes in: a rich sensitive man who becomes the new sub right after getting out of a bad relationship with his ex. Halsey greets Delacorte pretending to act like the other teachers who care and befriends him quickly by getting him to show her an old cell-phone pic of his ex who apparently has a "big heart". A few scenes later, Halsey decides to save up for breast implant, which pretty much explains what will happen throughout the movie. Long story short, she looks for ways to make big bucks for herself, like the middle school car wash and the bonus given to the teacher who has the highest scoring class on standardized tests, and so forth.
As much as you think that there could be at least 50 hilarious jokes written for that main plot line alone, I only saw less than half. So who do I blame? The writers, director, actors? Or how about the MPAA? Yeah I'll go with that. Going back to the trailers I saw in the beginning that actually got me excited to see this at one point; I laughed at about half the scenes I saw in the trailer that were not put in the theatrical release. Why was that? I don't know. The scenes I laughed at were not only funny, but after seeing the theatrical cut it would've made perfect sense to not take it out of the movie because it totally followed the plot. That would also explain why the characters were so badly developed, because there wasn't anything funny or interesting about them, except for Jason Segel's character as the gym teacher. He was the only funny character throughout the whole movie that actually made the movie less bad than it should've been. It's like they kept all his scenes in and threw out over 50% of all the other supporting characters scenes which is why I never could never read into Scott Delacorte that well, or Halsey's rival teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch). Yeah, I forgot to mention that. Halsey and Amy pretty much hate each other for some reason and try to sabotage each others plans. Any good jokes written into that sub-plot? Maybe a couple, though I think I still witnessed more in the trailer.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I believe the MPAA or somebody in charge of post-production besides the director threw out a lot of scenes from the original director's cut onto the cutting room floor for some reason. Whatever that reason was, it didn't work at all. When watching the theatrical cut, I could tell there was A LOT edited out. I could tell when a scene wasn't finished or even when one of the characters mentioned something, I could tell it was a reference to a previous scene that was cut out completely. This is why I plan to to rent the Unrated Version on DVD and see if it's literally 10 times funnier that was intended to be than what the MPAA considers comedy to be. I wouldn't be surprised because most directors cuts seem to make more sense, like Donnie Darko or 40 Year Old Virgin, that just add more depth to the lead or supporting character or explains more to the main plot.
I can only say I liked this movie somewhat for a good build-up, but hated it for it's crappy pay off. I can't wait to see what the unrated version can do better, which I'll review when it comes out.
**1/2
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