Bad News Bears

In another in a long line of remakes this summer comes Bad News Bears, a new spin on the 1976 film. Bad News Bears was a surprisingly enjoyable underdog story that played well with its cast of misfits. Note first of all that as anyone who has seen the original 1976 film can tell you, this film may be about kids but that does not mean that it is for kids. That said this film should be a real treat for older kids and have their parents laughing sheepishly.

Though I personally thought Linklater should have gone all out and let the film get an R rating the filmmakers decided to go with the more lucrative kid friendly PG-13. That doesn’t mean that this is appropriate fare. There are some adult sexual situations but mainly there are just a bunch of violent and foul mouthed kids in the somewhat raunchy film. As the recent success of Wedding Crashers can attest there is certainly an audience for R rated comedy but Bad News Bears treads finely on the PG-13 line. The film might have been richer, and more irreverent if they hadn’t scaled back for the PG-13 rating. Whereas Wedding Crashers seemed to be adding material to garner an R rating Bad New Bears seemed to be heavily restrained from falling into the R category of adult comedy.

Billy Bob Thornton does an admirable job as the former pro baseball player turned Little League coach, Morris Buttermaker, though one can only guess that the envelope of money he was handed at the start of the film must have been for a considerable amount because I can’t think of why else he would coach a Little League team. Since the mother who set this all in motion was a lawyer I kept thinking that this Little League stint was part of a drunk driving plea bargain, but I guess the money was enough. Thornton plays Morris Buttermaker admirably, much more believably in fact than Walter Mattheau did in the original film. Think of him as Willie, from Bad Santa, light. He probably gets into almost as much trouble but the filmmaker leaves it off screen so the scenarios, and the attendant laughs, are left up to the audience’s imagination. Buttermaker drinks to excess on a regular basis, kills things to scrape a living, and womanizes whenever possible. His most reprehensible act in today’s society is that he treats the kids on his team likes adults and he talks to them like adults making inappropriate analogies and cursing up a storm.

What is left on screen is the typical modern day underdog story. Through fear of litigation from a campy vampy Marcia Gay Harden, a Little League is forced to admit everyone and forms an extra pathetic team of the social misfits, the unathletic, and the handicapped. Now one might question whether any of these children even want to play baseball, but it is a game and once they learn the basics it seems to appeal to most of them. The league is of course led by an ultra competitive type A personality in head to toe Under Armour gear played by Greg Kinnear.

Buttermaker shows up with a beer in hand, tries the kids out, and gives up on them almost immediately. He proceeds to drag them around town getting progressively more drunk in some of the films funniest scenes. The team then proceeds to humiliate themselves in the first game of the season and Buttermaker vows to shape up and give the team the coaching it needs. He brings in two ringers, his ex-girlfriend’s daughter Amanda, played here by Sammi Kraft in the Tatum O’Neal role, and bad boy Kelly Leak played by the nearly mute eye candy Jeff Davies. Kraft doesn’t have the screen presence that the young O’Neal did but she does a passable job as the girl on the verge of womanhood who looks up to Buttermaker’s old boozehound as the best father figure she has. The rest of the team has an update for the new millennium which reflect political correctness and multi-ethnicity much better than most mass media entertainment. In addition to an overweight catcher and a kid in a wheelchair the team is populated with near 12 year old nerds of varying ethnicities who would rather be on the computer tracking their progress towards college than standing in the dirt.

The film breaks into three parts, the first of the three is assembling the team and this is probably the funniest part as it showcases Buttermaker on his worst behavior. The second is the extended training montage where the kids learn how to play baseball, if not as a team, at least as individuals. Here the laughs are limited but functional. The third portion is the league championship which was both serious and amusing. Some may be disappointed that the Bears don’t win the game but those people would miss the point entirely, the team has a good time and that is what the game is about, not the screaming parents punishing the kids for little mistakes. One of the nicest things about this film is that it doesn’t really teach a lesson. Buttermaker doesn’t clean up his act and promise to be good by the end, and the kids haven’t stopped their deviant behavior, but they do have fun and that is much more the point of kids athletics than any trophy. So maybe that is the point. If it is then the film hits the nail on the head, don’t expect anything too highbrow, but just enjoy the fun.

Perhaps the child actors are not allowed the free range that the kids in the original were, or perhaps they just weren’t up to the challenge, but the kids on the team seem to lack the personality of the original cast. This is more than made up for though by Billy Bob Thornton who sleazes his way through yet another film. If I hadn’t seen his neurotic con man in Bandits or his straightforward coach in Friday Night Lights I might think that Thornton was not capable of anything else. But as his work in Monster’s Ball and Sling Blade attest, Thornton is a highly capable actor who likes to ease off the Oscar heavy work and have some fun once in a while.

Bad News Bears is one of the better remakes available this summer. If your kids are over 12 and you think they can handle a little deviant behavior it might be fun to take in this amusing and light film. Just keep in mind that this film isn’t a parable and it doesn’t end with everyone making good and you’ll be in just the right frame of mind to appreciate an enjoyable summer confection.

And if you feel in the spirit for more check out the original The Bad News Bears in the box set along with The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training and The Bad News Bears Go To Japan. If only the Astrodome still existed for a sequel.