Half Term Homework

The film I have chosen is called 'Bad Teacher' (2011) directed by Jake Casdan and starring Cameron Diaz as the lead female with Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel. 'Bad Teacher' is a comedy about an american high school teacher who detests her job. She has no passion for teaching and instead prefers to let her classes watch films in lesson whilst she sits and dreams about the boob job she desperatley longs for. All until she discovers about the end of year bonus for the teacher who delivers the best results from their students. From then on, she makes it her ultimate mission to become the best at all costs to claim the prize so she can finally get the surgery she has been so longing for:

This trailer works to entice the audience by featuring comedic scenes which attract their attention and make them laugh. This immediately expresses the genre of the film and is therefore a majour enticement to those who are particular fans of the comedy genre. The editing of the trailer also plays a majr part in enticing the viewer and conforms further the comedy genre as there are many fast cuts between a shot of action and the character's response to further play on the humour. The trailer also reveals quite a significant amount of information about the plot which is useful to entice the audience as people are much more likely to see a movie which they have a lot of knowledge about and the story.  

The film poster also conforms to the comedy genre by featuring a humourous image of a drunken teacher with her feet on the desk enticing an audience of comedy lovers. The poster carries a strong semantic field of 'schools' with the use of the graphalogical devices of text and image. The text has the appearance of chalk on a blackboard which is perhaps a stereotypical idea of what can be found in school as is the apple on the desk with an 'eat me' sticker as it is commonly thought that students give their teachers apples. The poster further entices the audience by featuring the comedic tag-line 'she doesn't give an F' as it plays on the idea of how a teacher is expected to behave as well as including a clever pun.

http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/badteacher/ - the website which accompanies the film was not particularly exciting and did not provide much of interest, however it did have important information about the DVD release and  the multiple versions available and therefore still stood an important purpose. This however suggests that the website was not used as a major use of marketing for the film and perhaps the distributers relied more heavily on the use of the trailers and poster.

'Bad Teacher' was produced by Sony and Columbia Pictures and was originally based in the USA. It had a budget of  $20,000,000 and was sent to 3049 screens all within the USA. At the US box office it had a income of $6,000,000 and peaked at #2 on the box office chart in its opening week. To the right is a comparative profile, comparing the audience ratings of 'Bad Teacher' with those of another comedy film, 'The 40 year old virgin'.

The target audience of 'Bad Teacher' is mainly older teenagers (from around 15 and above) and young adults in their early 20s. This is because the film is very humourous and playful and in many parts features crude humour which would probably most appeal to a younger adult audience than a more mature one.  

On Rotten Tomatoes, 'Bad Teacher' scored 44/100 from audience reviews meaning there was quite a lot of split opinions: