tieman64 "Because the commodity society can only function on the basis of disembodiment, its members are consumed by a hunger for images of the body, including one's own body image." - Peter Sloterdijk "The Longest Yard" (1974) with kids, Michael Ritchie's "Bad News Bears" (1976) revolves around a group of young, seemingly incompetent baseball players and the foul mouthed coach (Walter Matthau) who leads them.The majority of Ritchie's early films focused on the competitiveness and ruthlessness of a then contemporary United States. Consider "Smile", a satire which focused on interstate beauty pageants and which contained the line "Boys get money for making touchdowns, why shouldn't girls get money for being cute?" That question's answer is, in a way, present in "Bad News Bears", which focuses on the way in which sports, and human relations in general, suffer when commodified.Significantly, all the baseball players on Matthau's team are deemed rejects or incompetents. They're discarded, branded useless by a goal and profit oriented culture. Matthau attempts to build his team into a suitable product, but meets resistance. The kids literally can't play. What Ritchie then goes on to suggest is that this is okay. His multiracial cocktail of kids, like a band of turn-of-the-century immigrants fresh off the boat, reject a world based on gain and push. They make their own American dream, their own community, and then reject the game outright. For the kids, sports is, or should be, a vehicle for creativity, self-expression, affirmation and cultural growth, be its players black or white, male or female (the film's star pitcher is a young girl). This is a one-sided view sports – sport and competition can be viewed as an art, a performance, drama, something aesthetic and refined – but such a stance is necessary for Ritchie's allegory, and was common in sporting movies of the era (see "Slap Shot").Odd for a "children's film", Ritchie's kids are jaded, foul mouthed, world-weary and lost in a wasteland of Jack-in-the-Boxes, Pizza Huts and McDonalds. They're coarse, obscene, some are on the pill, others are already seeing shrinks and most find themselves surrendering their identities to forces far greater than they are. The adults, meanwhile, remain proudly oblivious to the problems of the kids. Competition triumphs. Let the twerps shape up or ship out.Ritchie's "Downhill Racer" featured a battle between an egotistical racer who refused to give up his personal values for the larger values of a team and community. "Bears" does something similar. But though it bashes the contradictions between the logic and values of capitalism and the values which the United States as a nation professes to represent (honesty, fair-play, truth, unity, freedom, equality etc), it also celebrates the possibility of personal accomplishment and achievement. The way the film pulls in opposite directions leads to its confused ending, the contradictions of US life far too complex for Ritchie's simple narrative.Released in 2005, Richard Linklater's "Bad News Bears" is a remake of Ritchie's film. Linklater makes a few changes, and casts Billy Bob Thornton as our foul mouthed coach, but for the most part his film is a shot-for-shot remake of Ritchie's. In both films the "coach" character initially sees his own daughter as but a utensil, his relationship with her a tool used toward a very specific end. Likewise, both films find their kids becoming a kind of "microcosm of the disenfranchised" (minorities, third worlders, girls, women, working class kids, alienated geeks etc), the children working together to reject American-bred success-at-all-costs competitiveness on behalf of their own little half-baked revolution. Like Ritchie, Linklater then sells anarchy and community under the ironic gaze of a patriotic American flag. Such middle fingers clash uneasily with the needs of a mainstream movie, though, as both versions of the "Bad News Bears" see the kids simultaneously losing AND winning, our heroes jointly losing their baseball match and celebrated for thumbing their nose at traditional sportsmanship and WASP manners. This kind of "have it both ways" ending was also typical in the 1970s.While Linklater is a gentle soul who clearly identifies with his material, his remake is nevertheless much too similar to its predecessor. Linklater's also stuck in a world of Little Leagues and suburban misfits, when today the situation he delineates is far more amplified. Today, it's not just a national pastime which has become a showcase for corporate ownership and corporate values. No, contemporary human beings are so colonised that everything - from our conceptions of time to even the simplest human actions - is now conceptualised in terms of the logic of capitalism. Our very language and thought processes reinforce a tendency to view and treat all objects, relationships, and conditions as presumptively subject to exchange. This mania is treated well by directors like Olivier Assayas. Linklater, meanwhile, remains stuck in the 1970s.7.9/10 - Worth one viewing.

TheLittleSongbird I have to admit I am not a huge sports fan, but several sports movies have sparked my interest, such as Hoosiers, Breaking Away and Remember the Titans. I saw The Bad News Bears mostly for Walter Matthau and I really enjoyed it. While it could have been a tad longer perhaps, and one or two scenes could have been tighter in the pace, it is a very good movie. For a sports movie, it is quite different, taking on the underdogs taking on the big boys scenario for example, and it works wonderfully.The production values are very nice, and Jerry Fielding's score compliments each scene beautifully. The film's script is quite gritty, but it is also funny and thoughtful, while the story is always engaging and well-thought out with the relationship between Morris and his team particularly pulling you in. The direction is solid, while the acting is excellent. Walter Matthau is simply brilliant as the boozy coach Morris, while Joyce Van Patten gives great support and the child stars are more than a match for Matthau. Especially Tatum O'Neal, who is quite charming yet very spunky and likable, and I personally think she has better screen presence than her dad.All in all, a very enjoyable movie, and whether you are a fan of sports movies or not, this movie is recommended. 8/10 Bethany Cox

dapplez Don't go making the mistake of thinking this is a kiddie movie. And don't go mistaking it with the dreadful remake.Made 35 years ago, this movie is a classic that could have been made yesterday. This ain't no softball Disney marshmallow fluff movie. Disney doesn't make movies about drunken, swearing Little League coaches, do they? Or 11 year old girls who go on dates to Grateful Dead concerts to persuade the local hood, Jackie Earle Haley, to join the team? Haley ends up chasing after Tatum O'Neal, whom Walter Matthau has bribed to join the team with the promise of free ballet lessons. So Halley, wearing cool sunglasses, has crashed a ballet lesson and ends up putting the make on an adult ballet student in tights twice his size with the line: "Do you live around here? I've got a Harley-Davidson. Does that turn you on? A Harley Davidson?' And then there is the overweight catcher who throws the ball back to Matthau covered with chocolate. During practice Matthau lays down a bunt and the catcher just stands there. Matthau tells him it is his job to get the ball and throw it to first base. The catcher is highly annoyed.So then in the first game when the Bears are being pummeled, a hitter lays down a bunt. What does the catcher do? He tries to get the runner out at home by throwing it to a very puzzled umpire.There are, I hear, some people who for some reason do not like Walter Matthau. Well, this is one of his truly great roles. Watch how he interacts with the kids and reacts nice and slow. There are parts later in the movie where he gets really angry, very convincingly, but mostly he is very relaxed, and his acting looks real natural. Some of the kids may have been a little stiff, I think he brings out the best from them with this style. It is great acting because he is so natural.I decided to re-watch this after an aborted attempt to make it through the remake, which lacks any of the charm and believability of the original, and said, hey, isn't that Moocher from Breaking Away as the hood? Sure enough, it was a younger Jackie Earle Haley. He's an interesting actor.If you like The Bad News Bears you might also like Breaking Away, which is about some teenagers who enter a bicycle race. One of the great sleeper movies, though at the time of its release everyone it seemed was talking about it.And if you like Matthau in this, check out Hopscotch. Another great role of his is in Mirage, with Gregory Peck, as a private eye -- a hard to find movie.Because of the swearing, this may not be suitable for little kids. Really, it is a movie for adults to watch and learn from, especially parents involved in kids sports. Come to think of it, Bad News Bears was ahead of its time. It is about adults who get bent out of shape trying to push the kids, a growing problem we've read about in the news in recent years. The lesson is its about learning to play as a team and have fun, and to be a kid!

Movie_Muse_Reviews If any of the kids in "The Bad News Bears" were your child, or if you had any acquaintance with a youth sports coach even remotely like Morris Buttermaker, you'd be outraged and embarrassed. At the same time, the film delivers a message that all involved with youth sports probably couldn't hear enough of. In other words, do as "Bad News Bears" implies, not as it says or does and take the foul language and poor behavior at comedic face value only.Walter Matthau stars as Buttermaker, an drunken former minor leaguer who coaches a little league team because his job as a pool cleaner isn't exactly lucrative. His job is to coach the Bears, a group of untalented misfits, most of whom have attitude problems. Basically from Buttermaker and the other adults involved in the league all the way down to the rebel kid, Kelly (Jackie Earle Haley), who tears up the field with his motorcycle, not a character has respect for another. Kids talk back to adults, adults yell at kids -- it's an ugly scene. How "Bears" redeems itself is something of a feat.You can't deny "Bears" its heart. Every lesson there is to be learned from youth sports finds its way into this film. At the very beginning the Bears give up 20 runs in the first and forfeit. Quitting and adopting a counter attitude is present from then on. Then there's the balance between winning and playing the game, something many parents and coaches still lose sight of even today. Despite filling its cast with rotten blonde kids and insensitive adults, "Bears" sneaks this in naturally. The film nearly gets dramatic at times considering the extent to which the disrespect does become a serious part of the story.So on one hand, you have a little blonde kid saying "Great, we have a team full of (insert racial slurs here) and now a girl!" and then you have examples of good sportsmanship winning out. It's tough to call "Bears" a family film or a kids film for that reason, but then again, some kids would really benefit from the values. Most of all parents of kids in youth sports need to see this movie as it really speaks at them.As a comedy, a good chunk of that nastiness earns a good deal of laughs, especially when it involves the innocence of kids rather than the awfulness of the adults. If blurring the line between acceptable behavior in films and comedy is fine by you, "Bears" is as good a sports comedy as any. ~Steven CVisit my site at http://moviemusereviews.blogspot.com