Bad news: 'Bears' remake swings and misses

Friday, July 22, 2005

By PAULA NECHAK
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Any movie season that can pitch three strikes of rehashed junk like "Rebound," "Kicking and Screaming" and now a remake of the beloved 1976 comedy "The Bad News Bears" certainly deserves to be called out.

MOVIE REVIEW

BAD NEWS BEARS

DIRECTOR: Richard Linklater

CAST: Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden

RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for language,

rude behavior, sexuality and

thematic elements

GRADE: C-

LINKS/TRAILERS
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PHOTO GALLERY

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Even the original "The Bad News Bears" was a bit overpraised but it certainly was an extra-base hit with a certain generation. Its pairing of irascible Walter Matthau as alcoholic, washed-up little league coach Morris Buttermaker and smart-aleck Tatum O'Neal as star pitcher Amanda Whurlitzer gave it a soft spark and edge.

In Richard Linklater's updated version, Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton plays Buttermaker, a has-been pitcher who threw two-thirds of an inning for the Seattle Mariners, and he's a self-loathing, womanizing bigot whose thoughtless remarks are equal opportunity offenses. No faction of humanity is safe from his unedited comments, not African Americans, the handicapped, gay people or Armenians, for goodness sake. Even Helen Keller is slandered -- twice. The only women who seem to slide under the wire are those who work at Hooters.

In 1976, there was something slightly adventurous in a plot line that used a girl as hero to help a group of bedraggled, gawky boys change from a troupe of losers to a united team. But girls in little league don't surprise anymore and consequently the script isn't fresh or very fragrant.

Director Richard Linklater employed the writers of Thornton's irreverent comedy "Bad Santa" (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) to update Bill Lancaster's original script to appeal to today's kids and their supposedly more sophisticated sensibilities. But this is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness.

And while O'Neal and Matthau crackled with chemistry in their verbal sparring, Thornton and Sammi Kane Kraft, who plays Amanda as a supposedly streetwise but actually whiny and colorless teenager, can't overcome a revamped relationship that tries to add some modern family dysfunction that instead points out the new script's many flaws.

Paula Nechak is a Seattle freelance movie writer. She can be reached at nechak@hotmail.com.