There’s good news about “Bad News Bears.” It’s as funny as the original.
The 1976 version starred Walter Mattheau as the slovenly curmudgeon Morris Buttermaker, a washed out minor league baseball player and pool cleaner who is cajoled into coaching a team of Little League outcasts. The 2005 version stars Billy Bob Thornton as drunken curmudgeon Morris Buttermaker, a washed out professional baseball player and exterminator who is cajoled into coaching a team of Little League outcasts.
Preferring booze and broads to baseball after a rather abbreviated stint in the pros, Buttermaker is drawn back to the sport only by the financial incentive offered by attorney Liz Whitewood (Marcia Gay Harden). The settlement of her class action lawsuit has forced the local league to find a place for all players, regardless of their abilities, including overly scheduled son Toby (Ridge Canipe). Thus the Bears are born.
Buttermaker really has no interest in coaching these kids, who initially appear to have no natural skill at the game. The prodding of hyper-competitive coach Roy Bullock (Greg Kinnear), however, irks Buttermaker just enough to get him on track. He recruits his estranged stepdaughter Amanda (Sammi Kane Kraft) to pitch and juvenile deliquent Kelly (Jeffrey Davies) to hit. Soon the Bears begins to win, bolstering the self-esteem of the team’s misfit members — and further infuriating the annoying and egotistical Bullock.
In this day of political correctness, it’s a brave move for director Richard Linklater (“School of Rock,” “Dazed and Confused”) to try to reconstruct the coarse humor of the first film. His Bears have been rewritten as a more multiculturally rounded team, but the ethnic jokes never stray over the sacred PC line. Everyone is a target for derision. The real winners are those who stand up for themselves, and that’s where the film manages to find its own interpretation of the original version’s caustic charm.
Thornton’s Buttermaker is essentially a PG-13 version of his character Willie in “Bad Santa.” That might be partly due to the fact that “Bad Santa” screenwriters Glen Ficarra and John Requa adapted Bill Lancaster’s original script. The difference here is that Buttermaker is a somewhat more likeable loser. Thornton as always pitches perfect on his role.
The Bears themselves, many of them first time actors, get their share of laughs. Both Kraft and Davies make their performances work because they are genuinely skilled athletes in real life. Timmy Deters plays the pint sized, foul mouthed Tanner Boyle in the same spirit as Chris Boyle did in 1976. Troy Gentile puts the audience at ease as the wheelchair bound Matthew Hooper, who can dish out the insults as well as he can take them.
For those who balk at profanity, “Bad News Bears” continues the tradition of the original. Overriding the objectionable language is a decent story reminding kids and adults alike about the value of inclusiveness. It’s a winner.
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