Miss Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a bad teacher at John Adams Middle School. She misses mandatory
meetings, makes her students watch films instead of opening a book, sleeps at her desk, and only took the job to have summers off and shorter hours. The gym teacher (Jason Segel) pines for her, but she wants nothing to do with him, since his salary isn’t enough for the $10,000 she needs for her dreamy plastic surgery. Instead she focuses on the new teacher, Mr
Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) who’s an heir to a watch manufacturer and looks like the cute guy from the TV show “Glee.” But he wants substance… A teacher who takes her job seriously, and makes her students her life’s mission, so he
falls for Miss Squirrel (Lucy Punch). Game on for the two women who stop at nothing to one up each other. Btw, Punch plays the same twisted and competitive character she played opposite Annette Benning in Being Julia. Undoubtedly this film is
targeted to an audience of young males all wishing Diaz were their stiletto-heeled, painted-on-skirt English teacher. Diaz
is fabulous in this role, leaving her usual sweetheart or ditzy persona aside to be this downright manipulative gold digger.
And the upside is at least she’s not fooling around with one of her students. Another upside is the truly
crafty script. Good lines, good laughs, and much better all around than you might think, though one can’t be sure who it is
we’re actually rooting for. Three tiaras
