The Bad News Bears (1976)
Directed by Michael Ritchie
An aging, down-on-his-luck ex-minor leaguer coaches a team of misfits in an ultra-competitive California little league.
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What critics compared The Bad News Bears to
Among other things, this music-based comedy borrows from such diverse cinematic sources as "Dead Poet's Society," "Fame," "The Bad News Bears" and "Catch Me If You Can."
White’s script holds few surprises – it is at its core The Bad News Bears with musical instruments, with Jack Black as Walter Matthau – but that doesn’t dilute or render the film’s wonderful momentum one iota.
Richard Linklater, director of "Slacker" and "Before Sunrise," is not a filmmaker you'd expect to be making a studio movie that sounds, on paper, as formulaic as "The Bad News Bears."
This is virtually the same character Walter Matthau played in "The Bad News Bears," though Hanks manages to make the role his own.
As in A League of Their Own, it's the relationship between coach and team that pulls you in, while the child actors are more than a match for old pro Matthau - especially O'Neal, who has more screen presence than dad Ryan ever had.
Then there’s Jackie Earle Haley, who was a big star back in the 70’s after appearing in The Bad News Bears (one of my all time favorite films).
More importantly, the movie signifies one of the greatest Hollywood comebacks, maybe ever, as actor Jackie Earl Haley, best known for his '80s bad boy roles in "The Bad News Bears" and "Breaking Away," creates a sympathetic character out of the creepy McGorvey.
As " Bull Durham " and "The Bad News Bears " and many other films have already demonstrated, baseball movies are just fine being about just baseball.
It’s The Bad News Bears for M.B.A.’s.
It’s more like The Bad News Bears with an economics degree.
So, the film fits nicely into the realm of The Bad News Bears or Major League, of underdogs who shock the world.
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The teaming of crusty old man and chipper scamp echoes dozens of films, from Chaplin's "The Kid" to Disney's "Pinocchio" to "The Bad News Bears" and even to "Bad Santa."
…or Yankees to their Bad News Bears…
Movies like Lord of the Flies (1963), Walkabout (1971), Bless the Beasts & Children (1971), The Bad News Bears (1976), The Cowboys (1972), The Squid and the Whale (2005), Kids (1995), and Pretty Baby (1978) all had a part in pushing the boundaries on how the portrayal of children is seen on film.
It’s as if “The Bad News Bears” had replaced every child-rearing book on the market as the instruction manual for how to talk to your children.
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Their first produced screenplay was the talking animal nonsense Cats and Dogs before ditching the wee ones and turning up the adult content with Bad Santa and the Billy Bob Thornton remake of The Bad News Bears .
Now that “Boyhood” is with us, it seems positively bizarre that Linklater – whose work rate has been more or less consistent over the years, even if the work itself has not – could have kept it stewing so steadily on the back burner all this time as he busied himself with the lesser concerns of “The Bad News Bears” or “Me and Orson Welles.”