WhatzUp

Bad News Bears
by Derek Neff

The first thing I wondered when I heard that Richard Linklater was remaking the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears was: will he do it? By “it” I think I just meant: will he really recreate the incredibly un-PC language and bad behavior that was portrayed in the original movie? Some people would have us believe that we live in a more lax and permissive society now than we ever have before, and if you’re talking about violence in media then you’re probably right. But in many ways we are much more inhibited now, certainly compared to when I was growing up in the 70s - I was nine when my parents took me and my siblings to the drive-in to watch Walter Matthau in The Bad News Bears - and in no respect is this more true than in the protective way children are now portrayed in film. In an age where a movie like Whale Rider can earn a PG-13 rating because it shows what the MPAA calls a “brief drug reference,” despite the fact that it is clearly a family movie, you have to wonder how a faithful remake of The Bad News Bearscould ever be made (the original The Bad News Bears was rated PG, incidentally; the MPAA was a very different animal in the 1970s, let me tell you).

Director Linklater cleverly retains much of Coach Buttermaker’s bad behavior in the remake, and many of the children still have potty-mouths, but the references to underage drinking and smoking, the racist epithets and the frank references to adolescent sexuality are now almost completely absent. I’m not complaining necessarily; I’m merely observing.

But what made the original BNB so memorable was its portrayal of kids as streetwise, sexually precocious, jaded individuals. (Since I was none of those things myself at the age of nine, I was sort of awestruck, I have to admit.) What we have here, in the 2005 version, is a perfectly acceptable but mostly forgettable little comedy that, by virtue of the fact that Billy Bob Thornton stars in it, seems a lot more dangerous than it actually is.

Many critics have compared Thornton’s performance here his performance in Bad Santa, but there are some important differences, and one gets the impression he could play fascinatingly subtle variations on the “bad boy” role ad infinitum without once repeating himself.

A cagily subversive filmmaker, Linklater has dabbled with mainstream movies in the past, in between fiercely independent projects like Before Sunset and Waking Life. (His previous foray into the mainstream, School of Rock, remains one of the best comedies of the decade so far.) Bad News Bears, though, is a bit of a stumble. It’s watchable, and you will laugh out loud several times. It’s just that there’s not much more to it than that. The original BNB is no masterpiece, either, but it’s certainly the better of the two films. And maybe that’s really what I meant by “it” all along.