Stars: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch, John Michael Higgins, Phyllis Smith
Running time: 92 mins
Rating: **

BAD Teacher. Good Idea. Bad Movie. Cameron Diaz’s teacher Elizabeth Halsey is the educational world’s answer to Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa – someone who perverts their job description in order to manipulate matters in their favour.

She’s not so much dedicated to teaching as improving her future by marrying a man with a big bank balance.

When her latest catch escapes – his mother reckons she’s only interested in his money, proving you should always listen to your mother – she’s forced back into the classroom.

Her lessons are simple – she makes her students watch movies (about unruly schools) so she can pursue her favourite subjects of sleeping, drinking and taking drugs.

When the school holds a fund-raising car wash, she slides provocatively on the bonnets squeezing soapy water over her half-naked body to boost the fund-raising and then skims off cash to put towards her boob job.

Fellow teacher and all-round spoilsport Amy Squirrel (British actress Lucy Punch) cottons on to her game and the fact she wants new teacher Scott.

He’s played by Justin Timberlake, who was Diaz’s boyfriend in real life which makes doubly embarrassing the gross-out scene in which he dry humps her. You can guess from that Bad Teacher is no sweet rom-com, more a teacher behaving badly gross-out comedy that never uses a three letter word when a four-letter will do.