Bad News Bears

Morris Buttermaker (Billy Bob Thornton) is a drunken lazy pest control worker. He's a former pitcher who actually got to the majors for 2/3 of an inning. Liz Whitewood (Marcia Gay Harden) hires him to coach the little league team. Roy Bullock (Greg Kinnear) is an opposing coach. The team is full of misfits and he recruits Amanda Whurlitzer (Sammi Kane Kraft) to play for him.

This one pales in comparison to the original in almost every aspect. I even like Buttermaker's original job of pool cleaning better. Billy Bob Thornton is a great actor but he doesn't have quite as much apathy as Walter Matthau. His drunk acting isn't as good and his anger is more threatening. The kids just don't have the same charisma. And Sammi is no Tatum O'Neal even though she could really bring the heat. Director Richard Linklater is given not much more than a copy of the original to work with. And it toned down the edgier material. The original was a scathing indictment of kids sports leagues. This one is trying to be too cute about it.

Every change seems to make this inferior. The kid in the wheelchair idea is stupid. They dropped the lawsuit idea. The dwarf joke doesn't work. The kids don't have the same chemistry together. Tanner Boyle and Timmy Lupus had such a great feel the first time around. Greg Kinnear is nowhere near vicious enough. They whimped out on his key moment with his son and what his son did in the original is so much better. Then there is the lack of an Oscar winner as the girl. They figured that they can't match the acting so they didn't even try. Of course, there's no way they would even consider using real beers. They could have done so much more than simply whimpify the original.

I love Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa and the Bad News Bears remake to 2005 after a 29 years since the original film. The film has changed to modify today's world where computers rule the world which I said at 10 years old to an skeptical neighbor and where even a handicapped wheelchair-bound boy can play baseball. Thornton plays Buttermaker, the major league baseball player who turns coach rather than get a jail sentence. The mother of one his players is played by the divine Marcia Gay Harden. I think the kid from Bad Santa also has a role as does Greg Kinnear who plays a competitive coach. I love watching the kids learn the sport by killing insects since Buttermaker is an exterminator and they sponsored by a strip club. They start getting better in the beginning. They are lovable losers who face ridicule and humiliation every day at school. Suddenly, they get help with a girl pitcher and a guy who's a rebel.

I think everyone who has seen this movie would agree with me, Billy Bob was the only good aspect to this film. The kids were terrible at acting, they made it seem like they were reading off a teleprompter the whole time. There were very few funny lines, and the kids seemed like nothing but potty mouth little brats.

The original is way better, the performance I saw by Walter Matthau in the original got me very excited because Billy Bob always plays a good drunk, but in this film Billy Bob was just too nice most of the time, so his character was a little too dull. If you enjoy baseball films then you might enjoy this, but I doubt even the biggest Billy Bob fan would give this 2 thumbs up...

Unskilled, belligerent group of young boys on a losing Little League baseball team get an alcoholic coach who eventually cleans up their act--and his own. Any film-buff well acquainted with the 1976 Michael Ritchie film "The Bad News Bears" will watch this remake in a perpetual state of deprivation. For every new ingredient added (a kid in a wheelchair, Hooters waitresses on the sidelines, a skateband interlude), there's a classic sequence dropped, funny lines omitted, a bracing sense of importance missing, and uncharismatic, non-plussed child actors who walk through their roles colorlessly. Of course, Billy Bob Thornton is a terrific substitute for Walter Matthau, but Matthau didn't carry the original film all by himself, and Thornton isn't fully in-character anyway (he's just breezing through). The whole early morning feel of Southern California Little League is missing, and the urgency of the original is gone, too (those kids had something riding on these games). Director Richard Linklater obviously was fond of the 1976 version, but he knows the notes without hearing the music; he supplies updated comedic touches without seeing the relevancy, and his tone and narrative are doggedly straightforward (except for the strange opening sequence, which immediately gets the picture off on the wrong foot). A sad botch. *1/2 from ****

When filmmakers get the idea to remake a classic movie, often it's because he or she feels that something was missing from the original. They feel that, by placing their unique stamp on the new film, they can satisfy unanswered questions, plot points, etc, while maintaining the basic dignity and character of the original.

So...based on that theory, Billy Bob Thornton's rationale for the remake of "The Bad News Bears" was that the original had too many letters in the title (in a bold and highly daring move reminiscent of Ed Wood at his finest, Thornton decided to drop "The", changing it simply to "Bad News Bears"), not enough swearing...and a kid in a wheelchair. Oh, and he changes enemy Yankee pitcher's last name from "Turner" to "Bullok" for reasons unbeknownst to anyone but himself. With revolutionary alterations such as these, don't be surprised if you pick up the rental box half a dozen times while watching the movie to make absolutely sure that you have indeed rented the correct film.

Basically, the plot can be summed up as "Bad Santa coaches a group of misfit kids". Yawn. We've seen this role, this performance, from Billy Bob Thornton one too many times. Thornton wants to bowl us over with the 'shocking' vulgarity of youth, but a trip to "Hooters" and Tanner teaching a boy in a wheelchair to curse both turn out to be so lightweight that it is likely that only the Reverend Jerry Falwell would take offense.

At best, the casting was marginal, and at worst, the audience is forced to wonder if the director actually auditioned the kids or merely closed his eyes and chanted 'Eenie, Meenie, Mynie, Mo" while holding a stack of acting resumes. Sammi Kane Kraft (as Amanda) was a great baseball player with limited acting ability, and Timmy Deters was only modestly successful in trying to recreate the role of Tanner Boyle. Tyler Patrick Jones as Timmy Lupus was far and away the most talented of what basically amounted to a mediocre cast of child actors, but he was utterly wasted in this film and was limited to a few one-liners that must have ended up on the cutting room floor from "Bad Santa". Naturally, Thornton is no match for the venerable Walter Matthau as Buttermaker. Whereas Matthau was irascible and cantankerous in a lovable 'Grandpa's dipping in the cider again' kind of way, Thornton's version of Buttermaker is creepy enough to make us think of adequate background checks and the stupidity of parents who would willingly leave their children alone with him.

Per his film tradition in his post "Sling Blade" days, Thornton goes out of his way to remove any heartfelt sentiment from the plot, and thus the friendship between Timmy Lupus and Tanner Boyle never materializes. That adds to what is perhaps the most irritating part of the film: the introduction of a new player (Tony Gentile as Matthew Hooper). It is an unnecessary plot device, possibly added only because the always classy Thornton had some good 'kid in wheelchair' jokes that he was just itching to use, and adds a touch of surrealism to a movie that should be imminently grounded in realism. In fact, Thornton changes one of the most touching moments of the original movie by handing it to Hooper (a character who, let's face it, has no redeeming qualities other than the fact that he's in a wheelchair) in one highly unrealistic scene; he thereby successfully strips even more of the heart away from the original film. Which, judging from Thornton's film-making history, was probably exactly what he intended to do.

In short, there are undoubtedly worse remakes out there ("War of the Worlds" and "Bewitched" come to mind), but not many. If you're thinking of renting this film because you're desperate for some true seventies banality, allow me to suggest that you save the money and instead try catching either the rerun of "Alice" where Flo says "Kiss my grits" for the eighteenth time or the action-packed episode of "My Three Sons" where Fred MacMurray lights his pipe. If you choose to rent the film anyway...well, don't say I didn't give you any other viable options.