The Bad News Bears, is a remake of the 1976 film of the same name. The film is about an alcoholic exterminator named Morris Buttermaker, who agrees to coach a youth baseball team basically for the money. When he first meets the team he realizes that they do not know how to play baseball at all so he tries to get them into shape to win the championship game. To help him do this he recruits his daughter Amanda (from a previous marriage), who he has not seen in years and a troublesome motorcycle rider named Kelly. Coaching one of the rival teams is Roy Bullock, a coach who is obsessed about winning. With the bursts of anger and alcohol problem the kids will have to get used to Morris, and he will have to get used to the troublesome kids as well. This remake of The Bad News Bears, is by Richard Linklater, who is one of my favourite modern day directors and after a bunch of cult and independent films this is his third mainstream film after The Newton Boys (which I have never seen), and The School Of Rock. The film also stars Billy Bob Thornton, who I thought was very good in such films as Sling Blade, and Bad Santa. With a good director and good actor I thought this film would be pretty good but it isn't. The character of Morris Buttermaker, is very similar to Billy Bob Thornton's character Willie in the film Bad Santa, and in some ways the film is a lot like Bad Santa (so seeing as two of the screen writers did Bad Santa, is not surprising). The film tries to deliver the same type of rude and profane jokes that worked wonderfully in Bad Santa, but makes the jokes a lot tamer for a PG-13 audience and they just don't work. They almost feel like rejected jokes from Bad Santa. And the film didn't do a whole lot for me and it was fairly predictable and in a lot of ways you could see where the movie was going. I have not seen the original 1976 version of The Bad News Bears, but I'am a person who strongly dislikes remakes and does not think that they are necessary at all. This is a remake that probably didn't have to be made because it falls flat soon and not even the talent of Richard Linklater, or Billy Bob Thornton can bring it back to life. A big disappointment from both these talents.
Review of Bad News Bears
