CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 7/23/05

Good News, Bad News

By nick randall

Loaded with hit-or-miss jokes, the new Bears looks almost identical to the original. The good news here is there's now a kid in a wheelchair that changes the team dynamic just enough that this film can stand on its own. The bad news is the more ridiculous tone takes away from some of the team squabbling that made its predecessor so lovable.

Bad News Bears (2005)

Glenn Ficarra & John Requa and Bill Lancaster
Based on the film written by Bill Lancaster

A remake of the 1976 classic (which won scripter Bill Lancaster a WGA Award), the new Bad News Bears follows Morris Buttermaker (Billy Bob Thornton), an alcoholic exterminator who agrees to coach a little league baseball team to make a quick buck. When he realizes his team of misfits can't even make it out of the first inning, Buttermaker commits to beating rival coach Bullock (Greg Kinnear) to prove he and his players aren't losers after all.

The film starts off slow -- not the story but the laughs, which for the most part have been set in a more ridiculous tone than the original. Given this is coming from the writers of Bad Santa, one might assume this is a smart move. But when stripper groupies start acting as cheerleaders and even shout, "Lupus, Lupus, Lupus," during games, it grows a bit tiresome by the end.

That's not to say this film isn't funny. Requa and Ficcara do show a knack for putting a character in such a fish-out-of-water situation that the jokes are inevitable. Enter Buttermaker's relationship with the newly added character Matthew Hooper (Troy Gentile), a pissed-off kid in a wheelchair who can only watch games from the bench. When Hooper shows up to practice with an eyepatch, Buttermaker mocks his pirate look. Hooper then responds that he's been diagnosed with cancer in the eye (and only later do we find out he's kidding).

Thankfully, Ficarra and Requa leave the structure of the original intact. (In fact, they hew so closely to Lancaster's original script that the late writer gets screenplay credit on this remake; see interview.) Even better, they add to Buttermaker's character from the start. Whereas the original rarely shows him away from the field, the remake starts with him doing an extremely poor job at killing rodents in a suburban house. He even takes the players to a job in the first act and leaves them alone to play with toxic chemicals. This works well in establishing how empty Buttermaker's life is, and why he needs these kids in order to find meaning. It also makes the first big turning point -- when Buttermaker decides to help the kids win because they're such losers -- more believable.

Perhaps the most important and surprising changes come at the climax. The role of Lupus, the shy kid with no confidence, is downplayed, and there's a touching moment (better than in the original) between Buttermaker and Amanda, the girl pitcher whom he comes to accept as a daughter. It's these softer moments that make the silly and vulgar humor tolerable.

Fans of the original will wonder why some of the big moments were changed while new viewers likely will find the ridiculous comedic tone more their style. All in all, it's good that writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa took chances and added the very funny Hooper, but a tad too many bad jokes hold this remake in the ballpark.

Bad News Bears (2005)
Paramount Pictures
Rated PG-13; 89 min.

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Nick Randall is one of the aspirants currently paying for a degree in screenwriting. He has written two features, a TV spec, and a TV pilot. After spending the first twenty-one years of his life in the Midwest, the thing he misses most in L.A. is Steak 'n Shake.

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