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The Bad News Bears Movie Review

The Bad News Bears is a 1976 sports comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal. It’s your standard sports flick.

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“I got a Harley-Davidson.

Does that turn you on? Harley-Davidson?“

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Hard-drinking, ex-minor-league hopeful Morris Buttermaker grumpily agrees to coach a Little League team at the behest of lawyer-councilman Bob Whitewood, who has a vendetta against the league for excluding his marginally talented son from play. After failing with his new team of misfits, Buttermaker enlists feisty and gifted pitcher Amanda Whurlitzer to lead the charge.

Needless to say, this is a very tiresome plot typical for sports movies. I do realize that those who love sports and especially baseball would find this flick very enjoyable, but I don’t like sports and I especially do not understand the appeal of baseball, so this movie was clearly not for me.

With that being said, the movie that have its strong points that would be remiss of me not to address them. The kids here are portrayed as such foul-mouthed bastards that of course I liked that approach having in mind it’s only realistic. Similar praise should be bestowed upon Walter Matthau whose performance in the admittedly familiar main role is excellent and very memorable. As for Tatum O’Neal, it’s so nice seeing her again in a 70s flick and she’s again terrific, but this is far from a memorable character that her Addie Loggins clearly was.

The Bad News Bears is also quite good at times in its quick, rude humor, but at the end of the day it became way too repetitive as a film consisting of quick insults and baseball games and not much beside those two that were exhausted to death by the end of the film’s runtime.

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It’s well shot of course, and I have to commend the score of the film that is admittedly very interesting. Basically, classical music is used in the game scenes and it made those otherwise boring scenes much more tolerable. Technically, the film is strong, but I wish its story were more original and more memorable.

The Bad News Bears benefits from a memorable Walter Matthau main performance, and Tatum O’Neal herself is also very good. The classical music score was also an interesting choice and some scenes are quite fun, but most of the film was repetitive in its structure that consisted of either insults or games. Its plot is also nothing to write home about.

My Rating – 3

You can get The Bad News Bears on Amazon.