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Customer Reviews of The Bad News Bears

Beneath the profanity from the kids was a serious point about kids playing sports
"The Bad News Bears" was an interesting was a film that got everybody's attention in 1976 because hearing little kids curse, specifically Tanner Boyle (Chris Barnes), was pretty shocking. But criticism of the film's profanity was tempered because of a scene during the big game when Joey Turner (Brandon Cruz), pitching for the Yankees against the Bears, is ordered by his father, Coach Roy Turner (Vic Morrow), to walk Engelberg (Gary Lee Cavagnaro), who has been hitting him hard in the game. The next pitch goes right for Engelberg's head, and right after he ducks and curses, Coach Turner storms out to the mound to confront his son for throwing a bean ball in the most memorable scene in the film. <
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>This scene changed what people could say about this movie because it made a valid and important point about playing Little League in this country, namely that the worst part of the experience is having to deal with parents. I still remember watching the fathers on a team we were playing reducing our starting pitcher to tears because of the way they taunted him throughout the game (our fathers were all in the Air Force and it suddenly dawns on me to wonder if these idiots outranked our pitcher's father). The scene also mattered because in terms of the film the actions of Coach Turner made those of Coach Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), who likes to share his beer with the kids and gets them to do his job of cleaning pools, look better. Besides, when Buttermaker sees that he is starting to act way too much like Turner, it changes things and sets up the big finish. <
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>The idea that parents like to get in the way is set up earlier in the film when Councilman Whitewood (Ben Piazza) coaxes Buttermaker into coaching the Bears so that his kid can play too. This despite the fact that we are talking about a team with the likes of Rudi Stein (David Pollock) and Timmy Lupus (Quinn Smith), who are as bad as it gets. Buttermaker could care less to begin with, but eventually a buried spark of humanity is touched and he moves from being apathetic to stacking the deck by recruiting a pair of ringers. The first is Amanda Whurlitzer (Tatum O'Neal), the daughter of an old girl friend who has a great fastball, and the second is the legendary local wannabe juvenille delinquent, Kelly Leek (Jackie Earle Haley), who can hit the ball over the fence and catch everything on this side of it in the outfield. <
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>So on the one hand "Bad News Bears" has little kids cursing, which is a bad thing, but it also exposes the fact that caring too much about winning when you are not even a teenager is a bad thing as well. Arguing about which of those two bad things is worse than the other would be interesting, but probably futile (I think it would be one of those red state/blue state issues, where conservatives are upset about the cursing and liberals). Of course things have changed such in the past three decades that the recent remake of this film with Billy Bob Thorton doing a mellower version of his "Bad Santa" character provokes neither the same response nor the same joy. But then the original message was lost in the pair of rather insipid sequels that followed director Michael Ritchie's film, so the best advice is to watch the original, feel guilty about enjoying it, and stop while your are ahead of this particular game. <
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Brilliant Matthau Performance. Far better than remake
`The Bad News Bears' was a very popular movie starring the inimitable Walter Matthau. So, why in the world did anyone think it could be improved on putting Billy Bob Thornton in Matthau's role as the washed up alcoholic former ball player Buttermaker in the position of coaching a little league team of baseball misfits. <
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>The puzzle is deepened in that the new version follows the old almost exactly, scene for scene and line for line. And, everything that was changed in the new version made the movie weaker. The four most obvious changes are replacing the city councilman who hires Buttermaker with a female trial lawyer; replacing the opposing team's (the Yankees) manager, originally played very straight by Vic Morrow, with a characture of a straight arrow win at all costs manager / dad; replacing the asthmatic statistics fanatic, Ogilvy with a kid in a wheelchair; and changing Buttermaker's `day job' from pool cleaner to exterminator. <
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>While the influence of some of these changes may be subtle, the change from asthmatic to paraplegic is perfectly symbolic of what is wrong with the remake. It is reasonable to believe that an asthmatic could make some attempt at playing baseball. Putting a wheelchair bound boy on a baseball team is simply absurd. While the original got lots of laughs by being totally plausible, the remake looses it by relying on patently implausible or at least not very believable situations. The biggest implausibility is Thornton's interpretation of Matthau's role. Thornton is a very talented actor and his fouler mouth brings just a bit more bite to the role, but he simply can't hold a candle to Matthau's original take on the character. <
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>The original is still a classic. The remake is a shadow parody of the original <
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DVD needs special (30th Anniversary) edition treatment
[Movie itself rates ***** , above rating is for existing DVD issue] Classic American film of the 1970s - but the DVD doesn't even contain the original theatrical trailer? Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, and the great John A. Alonzo's photography stand out - along with Bill Lancaster's (Burt's son) acerbic script, dually addressed to children and adults - yet performances of the Bears kids (Jackie Earle Haley et al) are what make this a treasure. A commentary by any of the surviving cast or crew members might be included. Given how much money Paramount made on TBNB in original release plus sequels and the latest re-make, seems like this title'd be ripe for a DVD double-dip.......how about it, studio execs?