Bad News Bears: Critic Reviews

[A] swell, fair-ball remake of the well-loved, anti-PC 1976 sports comedy.

Richard Linklater's enjoyable remake is filled with small, cute kids and large, goofy laughs.

The material is so solid and Thornton so tailor-made that the movie almost gets by.

But you don't watch Bad News Bears for the action out on the diamond. You hang out with that hangdog coach so you can catch every slurry, sour-mouthed retort coming out of his mouth. Now that's color commentary.

The movie is fun, though not great, and Billy Bob rules.

Stranded between pushing the scatological envelope and caving in to the formulas the 1976 movie established, and until the well-nigh foolproof ending, it comes up gasping for air.

More irksome is the ordained focus on plot undulation and simplistic motivation, as if nobody remembered that the first film was a social satire.

As it sparks to life, spewing outrageous jokes at the expense of every race, creed, infirmity and sensibility, viewers with G-rated hearts will run screaming, while the other screams in the theater will be those of laughter.

The kids in this knowing, tirelessly belligerent retread are as coarse and obnoxious as they ever were, maybe more so. And therein lies the problem.

A cynical money grab made to capitalize on as well as cannibalize an old title that should be spinning in its grave.

Thornton and his directors have yet to master the subtlety between an endearing drunk and a sadist.

The progress of the story is predictable, as it is in all movies about underdogs. They are bad, and will get better.

A good movie, not the disgraceful, witlessly modernized rip-off we have grown to expect from remakes.

Thornton's subversive performance as the type of guy parents warn their kids to stay away from is in this PG-13 movie a tad too profane for the preteens who would really dig it and too juvenile for most adults.

The movie comes from the Lazy Man's School of Cheap Laughs, where the class motto is: If you can't think of a joke, just string together profanities and raunchy sexual references.

Bad News Bears isn't Linklater's or Thornton's greatest work, but it's funny from beginning to end and properly improper at every turn. This is religiously irreverent stuff. Pray for more.

Nobody plays a dissolute scalawag like Billy Bob Thornton.

There are many lingerings over communal feelings other directors might pass through more quickly to get to the next giggle or guffaw more efficiently.

The new Bad News Bears has adopted a somewhat raunchier tone but delivers enough laughs to go the distance.

Ritchie's movie was genuinely subversive and hilarious; Linklater's, despite amped-up sexual references (the team celebrates at Hooters) is merely a passably amusing excuse to pass a couple of hours in an air-conditioned theater.

It isn't funny; it isn't sweet, and it has none of the innocence of the original.

Kids will be kids, and they are to be given leeway. But the film's adults, who end up only slightly redeemed at film's end, are not winners.

At least Linklater isn't just picking the bones of his forebears; he honors them as they deserve.

Fortunately, in the process of pursuing a box office winner, Linklater has crafted an entertaining motion picture.

Glenn Ficarra & John Requa's respectfully faithful script and Linklater's typically unforced directing style combine to generate many moments of laugh-out-loud comedy.