School of C*cks

Cine Review: BAD TEACHER
15 – 92mins – 2011
Written by: Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch, Phyllis Smith, John Michael Higgins
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If you thought the high school students of American Pie were a puerile bunch of sex-obsessed wasters, then you haven’t met Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz); the most foul-mouthed, vain, materialistic, responsibility-dodging layabout at John Adams Middle School – and she’s a teacher!

“Shut the front door!”

Dumped by her prosperous fiancé for being a vacuous gold-digger, Elizabeth returns to the profession she despises to make ends meet, wherein she sticks on a continuous run of videos to amuse her pupils while she sets about winning over hot-bodied goody-goody substitute – and, most importantly for our Bad Teacher – heir to a wristwatch empire, Scott Delacorte (Diaz’s real-life ex Justin The Social Network Timberlake).

“I want to sit on his fac– Hiiiii!”

Problem is that Scott has fallen for over-zealous star teacher Amy Squirrel (Dinner for Schmucks’ Lucy Punch; as loopy as ever), while Elizabeth attracts the unwanted attention of grounded – but broke – gym teacher Russell Gettis (Gulliver’s Travels’ dopey Jason Segel). Certain that a boob job will win over minted Scott, Elizabeth undertakes all manner of back-handed and down-right illegal ventures to raise the necessary funds for the life-changing op.

While sniggersome in places (it’s the age-old juxtaposition of people of authority acting inappropriately against type), Bad Teacher isn’t quite the off-the-hook riot the trailer promised, while the mortification factor is understandable given that the writing duo are regular scribes on NBC’s squirm-fest The Office . But whereas Michael Scott’s misguided work-based shame was buffeted by heart, Elizabeth is curiously void of emotion or a moral compass.

Watching Diaz manipulate her peers while cruising through life smoking pot, snoozing in class and cursing at children does get rather old after an hour and a half, and only sarcastic Russell comes out of the film with a modicum of decency (even if he's hardly a prize catch); Amy’s career-minded determinism quickly shifts to envy and suspicion while sickening Scott is quite simply a douche.

While the third act game-changing revelation that producing a class of top grades in the state test will bag the triumphant teacher a hefty bonus does make Elizabeth change tack and buckle down, Scott’s plot arc soon fizzles out, hampered by a bizarre hole in the story which sees him decide without any form of hesitancy that it’s perfectly acceptable to dry hump Elizabeth on a school trip while his girlfriend is ill at home!! Was there a scene missing or did I blackout through a major decision? Either way, he’s still a douche.


In a CR@B Shell: Diaz’s one-dimensional Bad Teacher is rescued from crude humiliation by a faculty of kooky characters, but as funny as it is while it’s on, Jake Kasdan’s school comedy is as unmemorable as one of Elizabeth’s skive-easy lessons. This average effort barely scrapes a trio of ticks but must try harder.
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This One Time, at Cheer Camp...

DVD Review: FIRED UP! – UNCUT EDITION
15 – 87mins – 2009
Written by: Freedom Jones
Directed by: Will Gluck
Starring: Nicholas D’Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer, Molly Sims, Danneel Harris, David Walton, Juliette Goglia, Adhir Kalyan, Margo Harshman, Hayley Marie Norman, Jake Sandvig, Annalynne McCord, Philip Baker Hall, John Michael Higgins
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Coach: “How do you spell ‘fired up’?”
Cheerleaders: “F! U!”
Shawn: “Not really…”

Before he hit the big league with last year's girl-who-cried-whore comedy Easy A (it’s funnier than it sounds; trust my review), director Will Gluck produced another fine – but thoroughly underrated – teen sex comedy in Fired Up! Shawn (D’Agosto) and Nick (Olsen) are two casanova high school football studs who – outraged at the thought of spending an entire three weeks without getting some lady action – ditch football camp in favour of spending the summer at cheer camp.

As cocksure wordsmith Nick works his lips through the 300 fit and limber cheerleading attendees, only stalling when trying to seduce married head coach Diora (Simms), Shawn finds himself falling for the one girl who is clued-up to their underhand motives and impervious to their flirtacious flattery – the captain of their own team, Carly (Roemer), who just so happens to also be dating the biggest douchebag alive in university fresher “Dr.” Rick (Walton).

Carly: “He’s Pre-med… at Illinois ”
Shawn: “Then why do you call yourself doctor?”
Rick: “Why put off the inevitable?”

Sure, the plot is predictably sanguine fare as the camp’s all-important climatic competition looms and Nick pressurises Shawn into jumping ship early in favour of a football player’s house party (love or X-box – hmm, tough choice!!), but Fired Up! has real flair which elevates it above a generic direct-to-video fusion of archetypal genre tent-poles American Pie and Bring It On. Incidentally, the scene in which the entire camp lips syncs along to an outdoor screening of the “iconic” Kirsten Dunst cheer flick is laugh-out-loud hilarious.

All the ingredients which made Easy A such a thoroughly fresh and enjoyably edgy experience are in place: a deluge of self-aware popular culture references (“Animal House reference! LOVE IT!”), witty dialogue (“I told them in Spanish – how much clearer could I have been?”), quotable quips (“….just saying!”), an affinity towards costumed mascots and genuine characters with actual personalities. Sure, there’s also room for the mandatory bad language and (brief) scenes of gratuitous nudity, but even with such sex-obsessed personas, the lead duo are surprisingly likeable lads – and not the single-minded juvenile chumps they first appear to be.

Add into the mix a buoyant, up-beat soundtrack (The Ting Tings, Chumbawumba, Whitesnake, Avril Lavigne, OPP), bright, summery cinematography and a team of uniquely kooky supporting players who breath life into their niche clichés (brainiac younger sister, closet lesbian, camp extrovert, bohemian stoner), and you have yourself a vivacious and varied cheerleader movie which you’ll like even if you “could have one in the mouth and two in the hand and still win a straight award”… What? Just saying!


In a CR@B Shell: Much like a cheer pyramid, Fired Up! is a teen sex comedy which is so much more than the sum of its nimble parts. Spunky characters with audacious attitudes meant that “I was laughing, I, I, was laughing!” and I’m pleased to report that the director didn’t change his game too dramatically for his follow-up effort. “Goooooo Gluck!”
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(Meat) Swords and Scandals

DVD Review: VIRGIN TERRITORY
15 – 93mins – 2007
Written by: David Leland
Directed by: David Leland
Starring: Hayden Christensen, Mischa Barton, Tim Roth, Matthew Rhys, Rupert Friend
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Despite a $40 million budget, a handful of semi-decent sword fights, some stunning Italian countryside backdrops and a fairly well known (if hardly credible) up-and-coming cast, it isn’t difficult to deduce why David Leland’s Virgin Territory was deprived of a theatrical run and quietly sneaked out direct-to-DVD instead; it’s an uncomfortable mess of a movie which throws a lot of two dimensional characters and relationships at the audience, then grows bored of the set-up and finds ever-more implausible excuses to get the girls to disrobe in the hope we’ll forget just how terrible all the other aspects of the script are.

Well, I haven’t. Which is unfortunate for David Leland (as he's about to receive one helluva bad write up), but even more unfortunate for me because I am now scarred with the memory of just how close I came – on multiple occasions – to turning this appalling tat off. None more so than while watching two prick-teasing milkmaids bring a cow to milk over the faces of two up-for-it Florentines… Seriously, that wasn't innuendo. Virgin Territory is no romantic period drama; it's more comparable to one of the latter American Pie sequels mixed with groan-inducing Carry On... style “humour” (and I use that term loosely) – in the 14th century.

Narrated by angel-arse-painter-masquerading-as-a-priest Alessandro Felice (Rupert Friend – quirky, inane), the film's sketchy plot concerns the beautiful Princess Pampinea (Mischa The O.C. Barton – expressionless), orphaned after the death of her parents to the plague, and the decision she must make regarding who she should marry: her betrothed suitor from across the seas, Count Dzerzhinsky (Matthew Rhys – flamboyant), rich local baddie old enough to be her father, Gerbino De La Ratta (Tim Roth – slumming it), or handsome and dashing rogue – and, hint hint, MALE LEAD – Lorenzo (Hayden "Anakin Skywalker" Christensen – unemotive)? Hmmmm, I wonder...

Surprisingly, it still takes Pampinea over ninety cringeworthy minutes to make the most obvious decision ever, as she and a band of faceless, randy youngsters make their way across Italy to escape the plague ravishing the city, getting into all manner of farcical, sexual escapades on their travels. As you do. Lorenzo falls out of a tree and pretends to be death and mute (!) so that a local monastery will hire him as their gardener and he can have his way with the sex-starved nuns; laddish Ghino (Ryan Cartwright) is so obsessed with losing his virginity he dreams of angelic winged phallus's while he sleep-humps air; feisty redhead Filomena (Rossalindel Halstead) escapes from becoming a sex slave to a travelling circus by making the men drop their trousers and pegging it when they fight over which size-order they should sleep with her in... *sigh* At one point there is even a misplaced cameo from David Walliam's peddling his Lou from Little Britain schtick... It really speaks volumes that this was high brow comedy compared to the puerile depths Virgin Territory waded at, mainly because it provided two minutes when the sorry excuse for a script wasn't obsessed with talking about or depicting sex...

Christensen and Barton have zero on-screen chemistry, Tim Roth looks embarrassed by the dreck he is forced to read and only Matthew Rhys arrives at the end credits with a modicum of pride intact, delivering his over-the-top lines with gusto. The plot is rambling but inconsequential, with players making the most ludicrously uncharacteristic decisions just to force a risque scenario. At one point, beauty Elissa (Kate Groombridge) turns up randomly in a lake, just so she can be seen naked and meet a passing Dzerzhinsky and *gasp* fall in love with Pampinea's cast off. Well, there couldn't possibly be two minor characters left out of the happy-ever-after conclusion... Shakespeare this ain't. Hell, this even falls short of capturing a pinch of the fun or charm of 80s cult The Princess Bride, which David Leland is clearly inspiring to imitate. Pity his tongue is more interested in getting into all the damsel's knickers than it is in being in his cheek.


CR@B Verdict: Comedy? Adventure? Drama? Romance? Period piece? Porn? Virgin Territory is a pathetic and embarrassing mess of juxtaposing genres awkwardly shoehorned around a stream of juvenile innuendo and gratuitous nudity. Avoid like the plague.
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