Bad News Bears (2005)
Directed by Richard Linklater
Morris Buttermaker is a burned-out minor league baseball player who loves to drink and can't keep his hands to himself. His long-suffering lawyer arranges for him to manage a local Little League team, and Buttermaker soon finds himself the head of a rag-tag group of misfit players. Through unconventional team-building exercises and his offbeat coaching style, Buttermaker helps his hapless Bears prepare to meet their rivals, the Yankees.
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What critics compared Bad News Bears to
They give the entire film a slight softness that reminds you of Bad News Bears , Meatballs and Little Darlings , an almost subliminal callback to an era and a style that’s long gone but many viewers instinctually remember, whether on celluloid or in real life.
If you’ve never seen Bad News Bears, Bad Santa, or one of a dozen other better movies about adults being mean to kids with the word “Bad” in the title, maybe you’ll think this is the funniest thing since Adam Sandler pissed his pants on a field trip.
Wielding its title like a blunt instrument, Bad Teacher plainly evokes The Bad News Bears and Bad Santa, two other black comedies about profane, selfish, ill-mannered cranks who work with children but lack the ability (or the interest) to censor themselves in their presence.
There are shades of Harry Potter in the adaptation by Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Secret Service), but with much more of an underdog vibe, like a fantastical Bad News Bears.
And while their flops are few, they are at least noteworthy in their awfulness: Linklater's remake of The Bad News Bears was an idea that should have been abandoned at the conceptual stage, and Smith is still trying to live down 2004's Jersey Girl, a flubbery romantic vehicle for chum Ben Affleck.
Richard Linklater lost some street cred with "School of Rock," which violated true independent-film principles by being a box office success, and "Bad News Bears," which broke the rules by being a crappy remake.
An often underrated director, ever since breaking through with Dazed and Confused Linklater has effortlessly bounced between inventive independent work like Tape, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset (as well as the aforementioned Waking Life) and crowed-pleasing studio films such as School of Rock and Bad News Bears.
Linklater âs last release was Bad News Bears , and his next is Octoberâs Fast Food Nation .
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The film starts in the midst of a youth baseball game, and with the retro uniforms and bright sunny day, for a moment you feel like you’ve stumbled into a “Bad News Bears” style coming-of-age film.
For a moment the film looks like it is heading into Bad News Bears and Major League territory as it appears a bunch of unwanted misfits are to be the core of the new look team.
I felt pain for the kid playing Tanner (with firecrackers) from the Bad News Bears.
Eschewing Apatovian sentiment and a refreshingly absent insidious moral center, Horrible Bosses has a lot in common with the abrasive Glenn Ficarra-John Requa projects Bad Santa and Bad News Bears.
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Linklater, whose nimbleness has helped him stretch from low-budget indies ("Slacker") to mainstream Hollywood fare ("Bad News Bears"), goes back to his East Texas roots with "Bernie" - not just the subject, but the region's drawling style of storytelling.
Better than the poundingly unnecessary remake of Bad News Bears ?
He’s even dipped his toe into mainstream comedy in School of Rock and Bad News Bears.