Bad News Bears - Palm Beach Post movie review

'Bad News Bears': Fairly funny, void of originality

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Originality has always been suspect in Hollywood, which long ago learned that audiences will settle for recycled material.

So now we are inundated with remakes, the best of which (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Manchurian Candidate) take a fresh approach to familiar films.

Paramount Pictures

'Bad News Bears'

C+

The verdict: A perfectly competent remake of the Little League comedy, with no personality of its own.

Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden, Timmy Deters, Sammi Kane Kraft
Run time: 111 minutes
Release date: July 22, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for rude behavior, language throughout, some sexuality and thematic elements.
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More often than not, though, we get do-overs like Bad News Bears, a faithful, fitfully entertaining couple of hours without a single new idea in its head.

What makes that so strange is that the remake of the 1976 Little League comedy is directed by Richard Linklater, a maverick filmmaker who put his personal stamp on such movies as Before Sunrise/Before Sunset, Waking Life and even School of Rock. Here he delivers a perfectly competent, frequently funny film, but with absolutely no personality of its own.

Billy Bob Thornton is well cast as the cranky, alcoholic coach, in large part because of the screenplay fashioned for him by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who did the same on Bad Santa, with a similarly foul-mouthed character. Greg Kinnear gets to be smarmy and hot-headed as the win-at-all-costs rival coach and it is anyone's guess what Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden saw in the role of a do-it-all lawyer/mom, other than a paycheck.

In the Tatum O'Neal role of the team's star pitcher, rookie actress Sammi Kane Kraft was apparently chosen for her athletic ability, not her charisma. For some reason, the tantrums of Tanner (Timmy Deters), a player with serious anger issues, struck me funny every time. And it is hard to argue with a prominent, perky product placement for Hooters restaurants. Otherwise, it would really help your enjoyment of this movie if you never saw the earlier one.