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The Bad News Bears
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The remake of the 1976 kids' classic "The Bad News Bears" is directed by the talented and prolific Richard Linklater. Why? Good question. "It's the kind of film you couldn't get away with if it didn't have the successful lineage of the first film," Linklater told Entertainment Weekly recently. "If we didn't have the name 'Bad News Bears,' we couldn't be doing what we are doing." He was referring, no doubt, to the prodigious underage swearing.
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The Bad News Bears In Breaking Training is the comic and poignant second-in-the-series of adventures with the pint-sized sandlot ballplayers initiated with the smash success, The Bad News Bears. The picture picks up the Bears' career a year after their infamous second-place finish in the North Valley League. Faced with a chance to play the Houston Toros for a shot at the Japanese champs, they devise a way to get to Texas to play a the famed Astrodome. On their pilgrimage to Houston, the Bears gain a new coach; dump that coach; add a new pitcher who can't get his fastball over the plate; find another coach who shows him how it's done, and go on to a come-back victory with all eyes on Japan.
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The Bad News Bears In Breaking Training picks up a year after the Bears previous championship game. After dumping a new tough-as-nails coach, the Bears are faced with the chance to play the Huston Toros at the Astrodome in Texas. With a new slick pitcher on their team named Cameron (Jimmy Baio, cousin of Scott), the Bears quickly devise a way to get from California to good old Texas un-chaperoned and led by the rebellious Kelly Leak. Once in Texas the Bears run into some trouble at their hotel with the manager and the local police (it doesn't hurt that the van they've been using is actually stolen). Kelly turns to his father (Devane), who just happens to be located in Texas as well. Mr. Leak agrees to coach the boys and help them with their game, much to Kelly's dismay.
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[A]fter the monumental success of The Bad News Bears, a sequel seemed like something that could not be stopped as the forces at Paramount needed to rush something right out. So, the just two months and a year after the original, "The Bad News Years in Breaking Training" made its debut. Of course, the original writer Bill Lancaster didn't return, the original director Michael Ritchie didn't return and Walter Matthau didn't even bother to come back to the team. but hey, you got a decent deal of the original kids from the first film.
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It is a shame that The Bad News Bears is just another one of those summer remakes that studios seem to keep revisiting. This film has the spirit of the original, but not the spontaneity or genuineness. It is really worth seeing just for Thornton’s performance, which is like a PG-13 version of his outstanding work in the dark comedy Bad Santa.
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What keeps The Bad News Bears from falling into the post-Watergate hopelessness that dogged movies of the time is that Ritchie's is a cheerful cynicism. For Ritchie, boosterism and patriotism are just more havens for petty corruption and hypocrisy. And while it's in no way a subtle movie, watching it today, you're struck by how a movie this relaxed in its approach could be such a crowd-pleaser.
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The Bad News Bears