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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Krazy, Krazy Knights

DVD Review: KNIGHT AND DAY – EXTENDED EDITION
12 – 112mins – 2010
Written by: Patrick O'Neill
Directed by: James Mangold
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Blucas, Maggie Grace, Jordi Mollà, Viola Davis, Paul Dano
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Bright, boisterous and bullet-sprayed, Knight and Day's financiers (and Tom Cruise's agent) were seriously banking on this globe-trotting romp to propel the formerly untouchable sofa-jumping Scientologist back to the top of the Hollywood hot property ladder. Surprise, surprise, director James Mangold's flop-buster action flick crashed and burned like a pilot-less aeroplane emergency landing in a crop field. Oh well, there's always M:I4, Tom.

It's not hard to see why Knight and Day's content failed to make amends for the titular pun-ishment: for all of the fish-out-of-water “hilarity” of seeing excess baggage Cameron Diaz hauled unwillingly from exotic locale to exotic locale, this Six Days Seven Nights a-like game of cat-and-mouse drags on for far too long – but still they weigh down this home release with seven additional minutes.

Diaz's everywoman mechanic June Havens flips from trusting to framing Cruise's fugitive spy Roy Miller so often that you quickly lose interest in their campaign to save an eternal energy source from being sold on the black market, and when even a motorcycle chase along the streets of Spain amongst a herd of stampeding bulls doesn't grab you by the horns, you know that this really is one mission incongruous.


In a CR@B Shell: Like an expensive vacation you just want to leave early, Knight and Day packs in so many of the richest ingredients that you switch off from the pretty landscapes and ballsy adventuring and just long to be back in the comfort of a better film.
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From Swamp Thing to Swamp King?

Film Review: SHREK THE THIRD
U – 93mins – 2007
Written by: Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman, Chris Miller, Aron Warner
Characters inspired by the novel by: William Stieg
Directed by: Chris Miller and Raman Hui
Starring the vocal talents of: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphey, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Rupert Everett, Justin Timberlake, John Cleese, Julie Andrews, Eric Idle
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I was in the minority who genuinely favoured 2004’s Shrek 2 to DreamWorks’s original fantasy-flavoured romp, yet I was in absolutely no rush to see this largely reviled threequel, for the very reason that it was largely reviled. In fact, franchise closer Shrek Forever After is already out on DVD before I belatedly caught up with this 2007 entry (recorded from BBC1 on Christmas Day). At this rate, expect the fourth film’s review circa Christmas 2013!!

Series director Andrew Adamson had already departed for Narnia prior to this entry, but otherwise all of your favourite fairy tale folk from Far, Far Away are present again. Unsurprisingly, most of them are totally superfluous and only on hand to provide brand familiarity, bolster toy sales and volunteer the occasional witticism. Nevertheless, they are joined by a veritable deluge of new-but-familiar mythological friends (Arthur “Artie” Pendragon, Merlin, Snow White, Rapunzel).

As rightful heir to the kingdom, the once-reviled-but-slowly-domesticated ogre Shrek (Mike Myers), accompanied by ever-loyal sidekicks Donkey (Eddie Murphey) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas), sets out to bring weedy student Artie (Justin Timberlake) back from High School to claim the throne after Frog King Harold (John Cleese), umm, croaks it.

While this cross country undertaking to (and then from) Worcestershire Academy provides the narrative’s driving force, there is rebellion afoot back home in Far Far Away, with vainglorious but down-on-his-luck Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) gathering together a host of e-e-evil pantomime villains (Ugly Stepsisters, Captain Hook, Cyclops) to seize the dead king’s crown in Shrek’s absence.

While not the complete disaster I was predicting, Shrek the Third does lack the “ogre the top” (ahem) sheen which breathed life into its predecessors – at times it feels more like a lesser, direct to DVD cash-in than a blockbuster of equal worth. The story felt flat and lacking inspiration, while the demographic-straddling humour felt less fresh and more reliant upon the audience’s recognition of past giggles (Puss’s kitten eyes, Donkey and Dragon’s “Dronkey” brood).

That being said, there are a few joyfully humorous gags (I am loathe to admit that I laughed out loud at Gingerbread Man shreking himself), and your heart must be made of dragon hide to not find the bumbling and banter-packed misadventures of the three spirited sidekicks charming, even if this isn’t their greatest adventure.


In a CR@B Shell: Nestled somewhere between Shrek the Turd and Shrek-tacular; the oddball characters we have come to know and love just about keep this saga-stretching second sequel afloat, even if it does feel like a lazier effort than its boundary-pushing predecessors.
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Cause And Special Effects

Blu Review: THE BOX
12 – 115mins – 2009
Written for the screen by: Richard Kelly
Adapted from the short story “Button, Button” by: Richard Mattheson
Directed by: Richard Kelly
Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, Sam Oz Stone, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osbourne, Gillian Jacobs
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Richard Kelly has had mixed success with his film career so far. After scoring gold with his head-scratcher of a time-twisting, thought-provoking debut, Donnie Darko (2001), he took aaaaages to bring us the disastrous, bloated mess that was Southland Tales (2006). Even with personal favourite Sarah Michelle Gellar playing a porn star (!) I still detested the film to such a degree that I nearly gave up on film watching altogether. Nearly.

So now we come to his latest attempt to confound, mystify and enlighten audiences: The Box, based on a short story from I Am Legend scribe Richard Mattheson. Dubiously, I decided to give it a go… Set in 1976, high school teacher Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) and her NASA optics engineer husband Arthur (James Marsden) are chosen by the mysterious lightening-disfigured Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) to take a morally questionable test based around the titular MacGuffin: you have 24 hours to decide whether to push the button, or not. If you do, you will receive $1million dollars (woo). However, somebody you don’t know will die (boo).

What would YOU do?


For the first hour of its 115minute running time, The Box was a taught, tense and credibly atmospheric drama probing human morals, greed, suspicion and paranoia – with a genuinely creepy edge. It’s hardly a spoiler for me to tell you that Norma does push the button, a decision both she and Arthur instantly regret. Indeed, their “winnings” are locking in the basement and barely given another thought. Arlington (see pic, above) accrues the mystery by refusing to answer questions about his shady and immoral test, but knowing far more than a human ever could – and he seems to have mumbling, bleary-eyed “employees” everywhere...

The film takes itself very seriously, and the cast play everything inflexibly straight, even as we pass the hour mark and things take a bizarre supernatural turn which threatens to derail the impressive first half. It brought to mind the genre-swapping shift midway through From Dusk Til Dawn (1996), only far, far less successful. Creepy gives way to kooky, especially when a visit to the library offers up a further test for Arthur in the form of three Stargate-esque portals, one of which offers him salvation yet leaves him floating above Norma in their bedroom, cocooned in a cube of dubiously CGI-ed water(!!).

Somehow, someway, following ethereal revelations, shootings and a kidnapping, the film eventually comes full circle, ending with god-wannabe Arlington making Arthur choose between his wife’s life and his son, Walter‘s (Sam Oz Stone), health, before the Two Face-channelling obscurity heads down the street to give another couple The Box…

Maybe the book made more sense?!


CR@B Verdict: Neither a Darko-dimensioned delight, nor a Southland-shaped shambles, The Box starts out as a tense psychological chiller before showing its true (shark-jumping) sci-fi hue. A curious and peculiar piece which may benefit from a repeat viewing – or locking away in the basement… What would YOU do?
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