[An old post]

BAD NEWS BEARS (U.S. / 2005)

Richard Linklaters recent "one film for me, one film for them" trend continues with Bad News Bears, and its quite obvious on which side of the ledger it lies. (Up next from Linklater is his independently produced animated opus, A Scanner Darkly, which is scheduled for a release early next year.) A remake of a 1976 film titled The Bad News Bears -- a film I havent seen but its said to be most popular for its subversive attitude towards "win-at-all-costs" mentality that pervades our culture in general and sports in particular -- the new "Bears" stars Billy Bob Thornton as a former ballplayer/current rodent exterminator who accepts an offer to coach a little league baseball team. A perpetual drunk, Thorntons coach Buttermaker ends up inheriting a bunch of misfits, including many whove been rejected by other teams, thus giving him even more reasons to not care. But once his team is embarrassed and he gets challenged by another coach (Greg Kinnear), Buttermaker starts to whip the lazy bastards into shape. Meanwhile, he acquires the services of an athletic young girl (Sammi Kane Kraft) to pitch (after witnessing her fast ball a young boy claims that hes just reached puberty). While Bad News Bears is mostly conventional with many of the requisite sports movie clichs, Linklater does throw a "curve-ball" or two along the way to keep things fresh (people whove seen the original might disagree). Whats quite amusing, however, is listening to these kids. The film pushes its PG-13 boundaries a couple of times even though its mostly in good taste, but there are parents out there wholl be shaking their heads while their kids snicker. Kinnear and Marcia Gay Harden are more or less wasted in supporting roles. But Thornton, who did something similar in his popular Bad Santa (2003), is fine and so are the kids who do as well here as the ones from Linklaters much better The School of Rock (2003).

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*Available in the U.S. on DVD (Paramount).