The Bad News Bears

The Bad News Bears; sports comedy, USA, 1976; D: Michael Ritchie, S: Walter Matthau, Vic Morrow, Chris Barnes, Tatum O'Neal, Jackie Earle Haley

The golden days of baseball trainer Buttermaker must be behind him when he has to accept training the the Bears, a team consisting of mostly 10-year old kids. They are terrible and lose their first baseball game. The alcoholic Buttermaker thus recruits Amanda, the 12-year old daughter of his ex-girlfriend, to help boost the Bears. This indeed helps, and the Bears start getting better, while Amanda also starts hanging around the rebellious boy Kelly who drives a Harley-Davidson. During a major game, Buttermaker spots that the opposing trainer Roy is too harsh towards his team, so Buttermaker allows even for weaker players to play and participate, preferring this over winning under any cost. The Bears thus get the 2nd place.

The 1st installment of the popular trilogy, "The Bad News Bears" are a rather fun little film celebrating friendship and comradery over winning under any cost. It gets the maximum out of Walter Matthau, who works as a grouchy trainer with several cynical lines ("Now get back to the stands before I shave off half your mustache and shove it up your left nostril!"), while a close second is the very good Tatum O'Neal as the "tough" girl Amanda ("I know an 11-year-old girl who is already on the pill."), though the rest of the kids in the team are rather bland and are not able to keep up with them. The parents reluctantly allowed their kids to the cinemas due to the too much cussing of the Bears team, yet a bigger problem is that a fair share of the storyline feels rather improvised and too "loose" instead of more tight and with more inspiration. Too much baseball, too little comedy, but still and overall fun film: a small home run for the director Michael Ritchie.

Grade:++