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Review: 'Bad News Bears' Has Identity Crisis
POSTED: 8:32 am CDT July 22, 2005
'Bad News Bears' (PG-13)
(out of four)The fact that "Bad News Bears" is rated PG-13 is indicative of the movie's identity crisis. There are literally two films awkwardly colliding here -- one resembling the R-rated drunken night of a college student's rowdiness, the other resembling the awkward, PG-rated apology from a hung over man who knows he went too far.These opposing forces ultimately cancel each other out, leaving a void where there should be a center. Here's a film for multiple audiences, but also for no one, changing tone and demeanor from scene to scene and, in some instances, from line to line.In the interest of full disclosure, I have not seen the original on which this remake is based. But in reading reviews, it seems as if that film was more interested in the idea of people willing to cast aside self-respect for the sake of competition. The 2005 update, by contrast, seems more interested in characters who are willing to cast aside their self-respect for really no reason at all; some of these adults, and kids, are just jerks for the sake of being jerks.Billy Bob Thornton stars as Buttermaker, though it seems more as if he's reprising his role from "Bad Santa." Here, just like in that comedy, he is a drunken, apathetic, foul-mouthed loser who occasionally sobers up just enough to remember that he once had potential. A minor league ball player who played almost a whole inning in the big leagues, he is a bitter and angry man who yearns for nothing more than the next paycheck to fund his daily trip to the liquor store.His new payday comes in the form of a little league coaching gig. Clearly a 21st-century twist in the story, a mother has sued a competitive baseball league for not letting her child play, and her little boy has joined eight others as the team of misfits who can only take the field thanks to a judicial injunction.But Buttermaker, to put it mildly, doesn't care and barely notices their inadequacies. He works as a rodent exterminator during the day, and then comes to practice drunk at night. Midway through batting practice, he blacks out on the mound, and he forfeits the team's first game during the first inning out of mercy for his talent-less bunch of uncoordinated, ill-mannered and disabled players -- yes, one of the kids is in a wheel chair.But the bitterness, anger and self-hatred that made "Bad Santa" such a brazenly offensive, and unapologetically hilarious guilty pleasure, doesn't quite meld with the naïve nostalgia of a children's film. "Bad News Bears," as envisioned by director Richard Linklater ("Before Sunset," "Waking Life") is a fundamentally flawed premise."Bad Santa" took the wholesome nature of Christmas but then detached Thornton, as an alcoholic mall Santa, from both the pageantry and the kids who were horrified by his drunken demeanor. He was the demented guy who crashed the party, the outsider who didn't really cause any harm but was acting irresponsibly. Here, though, he causes harm, and as much as we may laugh at his antics we also feel a little sorry for these kids. "Bad News Bears" asks us to laugh at a guy who is literally berating and ignoring the kids who look up to him as a role model and the children's film nature of things keeps reminding us that he is not a harmless hack, but an irresponsible adult.Not that all the kids are that much better. Some of them scuffle, swear and beat each other up, but their rudeness is on a level completely different than Buttermaker's. For them, using the middle finger is extreme. For Buttermaker, he goes from coaching a baseball practice to hanging out with strippers -- perhaps from the same strip club that sponsors his team -- and taking his players out to Hooters.The film has numerous laughs, but they seem to exist outside the main story. They are funny asides, as Thornton seemingly rehearses for "Bad Santa 2," but they are never organic to this tale of a team that goes from worst to best, and a drunken coach who goes from being apathetic to an excited, involved motivator. One gets the feeling this would be better to read as a script, since the raunchy dialogue and Linklater's increasingly sweet-natured style never quite mix.But in its current form, these lines and this humor get missed. For the younger audiences looking for a cheerful baseball movie, they'll likely be caught off guard by the quick four-letter words and the genuinely rotten nature of Buttermaker. For the older audiences looking for some dirty jokes, the movie is too timid for that -- and it has to be. When you're dealing with a story about kids and team sports, you can only go so far before either the kids seem deranged or the coach seems abusive.There's two movies here that can't be reconciled -- a halfway affair that suffers from feeling somehow both watered-down and overdone. Imagine "Bad Santa" mixed with "The Sandlot" and you have "Bad News Bears."Having trouble with that picture? Just imagine the troubles Linklater must have had in making it.
(out of four)The fact that "Bad News Bears" is rated PG-13 is indicative of the movie's identity crisis. There are literally two films awkwardly colliding here -- one resembling the R-rated drunken night of a college student's rowdiness, the other resembling the awkward, PG-rated apology from a hung over man who knows he went too far.These opposing forces ultimately cancel each other out, leaving a void where there should be a center. Here's a film for multiple audiences, but also for no one, changing tone and demeanor from scene to scene and, in some instances, from line to line.In the interest of full disclosure, I have not seen the original on which this remake is based. But in reading reviews, it seems as if that film was more interested in the idea of people willing to cast aside self-respect for the sake of competition. The 2005 update, by contrast, seems more interested in characters who are willing to cast aside their self-respect for really no reason at all; some of these adults, and kids, are just jerks for the sake of being jerks.Billy Bob Thornton stars as Buttermaker, though it seems more as if he's reprising his role from "Bad Santa." Here, just like in that comedy, he is a drunken, apathetic, foul-mouthed loser who occasionally sobers up just enough to remember that he once had potential. A minor league ball player who played almost a whole inning in the big leagues, he is a bitter and angry man who yearns for nothing more than the next paycheck to fund his daily trip to the liquor store.His new payday comes in the form of a little league coaching gig. Clearly a 21st-century twist in the story, a mother has sued a competitive baseball league for not letting her child play, and her little boy has joined eight others as the team of misfits who can only take the field thanks to a judicial injunction.But Buttermaker, to put it mildly, doesn't care and barely notices their inadequacies. He works as a rodent exterminator during the day, and then comes to practice drunk at night. Midway through batting practice, he blacks out on the mound, and he forfeits the team's first game during the first inning out of mercy for his talent-less bunch of uncoordinated, ill-mannered and disabled players -- yes, one of the kids is in a wheel chair.But the bitterness, anger and self-hatred that made "Bad Santa" such a brazenly offensive, and unapologetically hilarious guilty pleasure, doesn't quite meld with the naïve nostalgia of a children's film. "Bad News Bears," as envisioned by director Richard Linklater ("Before Sunset," "Waking Life") is a fundamentally flawed premise."Bad Santa" took the wholesome nature of Christmas but then detached Thornton, as an alcoholic mall Santa, from both the pageantry and the kids who were horrified by his drunken demeanor. He was the demented guy who crashed the party, the outsider who didn't really cause any harm but was acting irresponsibly. Here, though, he causes harm, and as much as we may laugh at his antics we also feel a little sorry for these kids. "Bad News Bears" asks us to laugh at a guy who is literally berating and ignoring the kids who look up to him as a role model and the children's film nature of things keeps reminding us that he is not a harmless hack, but an irresponsible adult.Not that all the kids are that much better. Some of them scuffle, swear and beat each other up, but their rudeness is on a level completely different than Buttermaker's. For them, using the middle finger is extreme. For Buttermaker, he goes from coaching a baseball practice to hanging out with strippers -- perhaps from the same strip club that sponsors his team -- and taking his players out to Hooters.The film has numerous laughs, but they seem to exist outside the main story. They are funny asides, as Thornton seemingly rehearses for "Bad Santa 2," but they are never organic to this tale of a team that goes from worst to best, and a drunken coach who goes from being apathetic to an excited, involved motivator. One gets the feeling this would be better to read as a script, since the raunchy dialogue and Linklater's increasingly sweet-natured style never quite mix.But in its current form, these lines and this humor get missed. For the younger audiences looking for a cheerful baseball movie, they'll likely be caught off guard by the quick four-letter words and the genuinely rotten nature of Buttermaker. For the older audiences looking for some dirty jokes, the movie is too timid for that -- and it has to be. When you're dealing with a story about kids and team sports, you can only go so far before either the kids seem deranged or the coach seems abusive.There's two movies here that can't be reconciled -- a halfway affair that suffers from feeling somehow both watered-down and overdone. Imagine "Bad Santa" mixed with "The Sandlot" and you have "Bad News Bears."Having trouble with that picture? Just imagine the troubles Linklater must have had in making it. Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
