The Bad News Bears
First of a trilogy of films takes an unflinching look at the underbelly of little league baseball in Southern California. Former minor leaguer Morris Buttermaker is a lazy, beer swilling swimming pool cleaner who takes money to coach the Bears, a bunch of disheveled misfits who have virtually no baseball talent. Realizing his dilemma, Coach Buttermaker brings aboard girl pitching ace Amanda Whurlizer, the daughter of a former girlfriend, and Kelly Leak, a motorcycle punk who happens to be the best player around. Brimming with confidence, the Bears look to sweep into the championship game and avenge an earlier loss to their nemesis, the Yankees.This likable 1976 comedy gently skewers the whole post- Rocky mania for movies about losers who find their mettle or salvation or purpose in life in competitive sport. Walter Matthau stars as a drunk who becomes manager of a pathetic little-league baseball team. When he brings in a talented girl pitcher (Tatum O’Neal), the crew have an actual cha
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More than just a baseball film,
Even movies about a bunch of pre-adolescent ballplayers were better in the 70s. This is possibly one of the best “kids movies” of all time … if you like an unsentimental, raw look at how kids really are. No glossy cinematography here, the Bears stands as a testament to the truth of kids lives. Not all perfect angels or demons, kids are more complex than we give them credit. Sadly, this truth seems to stop with this film; “The Bad News Bears” is an anomaly rather than a groundbreaker.
We never see the kids at home, or with their families except for some brief snippets at the very end; the film exists only on the playing field and the dugouts. Matthau is simply wonderful as a gruff drunk who doesn’t suddenly become loveable in a bland burst of generic orchestral mediocrity — kudos to the filmmakers for incorporating the score to Carmen throughout the entire film.
Vic Morrow shines in a supporting role that embodies the cutthroat world of American Little League (and sadly the movie made me ask, does everything about America have to be so cutthroat?) and Morrow’s performance is eerily true-to-life of all the sports parents and coaches out there who are more into the game than the kids. Watch for the tense stand-off scene between Morrow and Brandon Cruz.
The Bears went on to sully their legacy with two less than stellar sequels and a short lived TV series but this original film is worth holding onto.
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|A Matthau Gem… Shall We Say “Diamond?”,
The great Walter Matthau (all saggy jowls) plays Buttermaker, an ex-pitcher turned pool cleaner who tools around all day on his jobs in a chop-top station wagon with a cooler of beer in the backseat. A local businessman talks (with money) Buttermaker into coaching a youth-league team of castaways. Seems this is one community that takes its youth league baseball seriously. A little too seriously.
What follows is the familiar plot of a bunch of underdog kids coming together as the “Team Nobody Believed In” and contending for the championship against a team that represents everything that’s wrong when parents spoil simple pleasures for their children (the Yankees, coached by Vic Morrow, in a neatly-observed performance). Look, I don’t know if “Bears” even did it first, but this movie certainly does it best, and without the labored sentimentality of its progeny.
“Bears” never turns cartoonish. It captures just the right atmosphere- slanting, late afternoon sunlight during the games, the bikes parked behind the dugouts, the post-game chants. The kids, led by Tatum O’Neal and Jackie Earle Haley all perform well, and each has a sharply defined personality. Even Morrow, as Buttermaker’s antagonist, isn’t portrayed as bad or evil- just a guy with misplaced priorities that make him act like a jerk.
But Matthau makes this movie, conning kids into making martinis for him and cleaning pools while he regales them with increasingly drunken stories of his baseball glory days… until he passes out on the mound in a litter of beer cans. Matthau plays Buttermaker as a modern day loser who discovers (eventually) he still has a better nature.
Bright, smart and funny, “The Bad News Bears” is a joy to watch, full of quick-witted exchanges and even heartbreak. If you’ve seen one too many “Mighty Ducks” flicks, do yourself a favor and watch this one. It goes down as smooth as one of Buttermaker’s ice cold ones on a hot afternoon.
And look for that kid who played Eddie in “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” as Morrow’s son and the Yankees’ star pitcher. He has a ballpark epiphany that’s true and heartbreaking. Just another aspect of this marvelous little movie.
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