Bad News Bears

{{Infobox film

| name = Bad News Bears

| image = Bad News Bears film.jpg

| alt =

| caption = Theatrical release poster

| director = Richard Linklater

| producer = {{Plainlist|

Richard Linklater
J. Geyer Kosinski

}}

| screenplay = {{Plainlist|

}}

| based_on = {{Based on|The Bad News Bears|Bill Lancaster}}

| starring = {{Plainlist|

}}

| music = Ed Shearmur

| cinematography = Rogier Stoffers

| editing = Sandra Adair

| studio = Media Talent Group
Detour Filmproduction

| distributor = Paramount Pictures

| released = {{Film date|2005|07|22}}

| runtime = 114 minutes{{cite web|title=BAD NEWS BEARS (12A)|url=http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/bad-news-bears-2005-3|work=British Board of Film Classification|date=2005-07-22|access-date=2013-05-06}}

| country = United States

| language = English

| budget = $35 million

| gross = $34.3 million

}}

Bad News Bears is a 2005 American sports comedy film co-produced and directed by Richard Linklater, written by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa and starring Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden and Sammi Kane Kraft. It is a remake of the 1976 sports film The Bad News Bears, produced by Paramount Pictures. Unlike the original film, it received mixed reviews and grossed just $34 million against its $35 million budget.

Plot

Morris Buttermaker is a washed-up alcoholic baseball player who was a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners before getting kicked out of professional baseball for attacking an umpire. He works as an exterminator and is a crude womanizer. He is hired by Liz Whitewood to coach the Bears, a children's baseball team with poor playing skills. They play their first game and do not even make an out before he forfeits the game. The entire team decides to quit afterwards, but Buttermaker dissuades them from quitting and promises to be a better coach.

Amanda Wurlitzer, a skilled pitcher, is the 12-year-old daughter of one of his ex-girlfriends. After a couple requests, she decides to join the team. Kelly Leak, a local troublemaker but solid hitter, also joins the team, and the Bears start winning games. Before the championship game Liz congratulates Buttermaker on his success, which leads to them sleeping together, which Toby, her son and a player on the team discovers by accident. The Bears eventually make it to the championship game. In the middle of that game, the Bears and Yankees fight after Amanda is shoved during a play at the plate. A few innings later the Yankees coach Ray Bullock orders his son Joey to intentionally walk Mike Engleberg, one of the Bears' best hitters. Instead of walking him, he almost hits Engleberg, causing Ray to push Joey to the ground in anger. As revenge, Joey throws Engleberg an easy pitch which he smacks for a home run and leaves the game with his mother. Later, Buttermaker changes the lineup, putting the benchwarmers in and taking out some of the good players which causes the Bears to fall behind heading into the last half of the inning. With two outs, one of the Bears players, Garo, drives in two runs and tries to score to tie the game but is thrown out at the plate on a close call, causing the Bears to lose the championship 8–7.

After the game, Buttermaker gives them non-alcoholic beer, and they spray it all over each other. Although they did not win the championship, they have the satisfaction of trying, knowing that winning is not so important.

Cast

{{cast listing|

Billy Bob Thornton as Morris Buttermaker
Greg Kinnear as Ray Bullock
Marcia Gay Harden as Liz Whitewood, Toby's mother
Ridge Canipe as Toby Whitewood
Brandon Craggs as Mike Engelberg
Jeffrey Davies as Kelly Leak
Timmy Deters as Tanner Boyle
Carlos Estrada as Miguel Agilar
Emmanuel Estrada as Jose Agilar
Troy Gentile as Matthew Hooper
Kenneth "K.C." Harris as Ahmad Abdul Rahim
Aman Johal as Prem Lahiri
Tyler Patrick Jones as Timmy Lupus
Sammi Kane Kraft as Amanda Wurlitzer
Jeffrey Tedmori as Garo Daragabrigadien
Arabella Holzbog as Shari Bullock, Ray's wife
Carter Jenkins as Joey Bullock, Ray and Shari's son
Sonya Eddy as Saleslady

}}

Release

Bad News Bears opened on July 22, 2005 and ranked #5 at the North American domestic box office with $11,382,472.{{cite web |title= Weekend Box Office Results for July 22-24, 2005 |url= http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2005&wknd=29&p=.htm |work= Box Office Mojo |publisher= Amazon.com |date= 2005-07-25 |access-date= 2013-05-06}} The film ultimately earned $32,868,349 in North America and $1,384,498 internationally for a worldwide total of $34,252,847, becoming a box office bomb.{{mojo title|badnewsbears05|Bad News Bears}}

Critical response

Bad News Bears received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 48% based on 164 reviews, with an average rating of 5.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "This too-faithful remake aims low for laughs, turning off the easily offendable; despite another lovably irascible contribution by Thornton, it lacks the ensemble strength and originality of the 1976 version".{{cite web | url = https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bad_news_bears/|title=Bad News Bears (2005)|work=Rotten Tomatoes|publisher=Fandango|access-date=November 9, 2021}} Metacritic gives the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.{{cite web | url = http://www.metacritic.com/movie/bad-news-bears | title = Bad News Bears | work = Metacritic | publisher = CBS }} On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.{{cite web |url=https://m.cinemascore.com |archive-url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20170916153548/https://m.cinemascore.com/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=September 16, 2017 |title=CinemaScore |work=cinemascore.com |access-date=July 16, 2020}}

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, praising Thornton's performance in particular: "The movie is like a merger of [Thornton's] ugly drunk in Bad Santa and his football coach in Friday Night Lights, yet [he] doesn't recycle from either movie; he modulates the manic anger of the Santa and the intensity of the coach and produces a morose loser who we like better than he likes himself".[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050721/REVIEWS/50712002 Bad News Bears review] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080630043313/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050721/REVIEWS/50712002 |date=June 30, 2008 }}, Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, July 22, 2005 James Berardinelli of ReelViews also gave Bad News Bears three stars out of four, calling it "an entertaining motion picture" that "won't make fans forget the original, but it's not so feeble that it disappears into the earlier movie's shadow".[http://preview.reelviews.net/movies/b/bad_news.html Bad News Bears review], James Berardinelli, ReelViews, 2005

Giving the film two stars out of five, Don R. Lewis of Film Threat said that it has "a few laughs" but that it "just trudges on, going through the motions of the original with no spark" and that it "suffer[s] from the unbearable, crushing weight of political correctness".[http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=7774 Bad News Bears review], Don R. Lewis, Film Threat, July 24, 2005 Paula Nechak of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called the film "simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness",[http://www.seattlepi.com/movies/233504_bears22q.html Bad News Bears review], Paula Nechak, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 22, 2005 while Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that while "the screenplay [...] makes the most of Thornton's dry, skewed humor, [...] nothing happens here that would distinguish this film from other sports movies".[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/22/DDG9JDR30E1.DTL Bad News Bears review], Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Legacy

In a case of life imitating art, in 2012, a Los Angeles–area little league in financial difficulty received a donation from the owner of a local strip club in order to continue operating.{{Cite web |last=Gonzalez |first=Jonathan |date=12 March 2012 |title=Strip Club Saves Lennox Little League's Season: Report |url=https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/strip-club-saves-little-leagues-season-donation/2078693/ |publisher=KNBC |access-date=7 July 2024}} Comparisons were immediately made to a scene in Bad News Bears in which the team received a donation from "Bo-Peeps Gentlemen's Club" and is required to put the logo of the strip club on their uniforms.{{Cite web |title=L.A. Little League's season was saved by charitable strip club, until officials decided to return donation |url=https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/l-little-league-season-saved-charitable-strip-club-114729592.html |department=Prep Rally |publisher=Yahoo! Sports |date=13 March 2012 |access-date=7 July 2024}} The real-life club did not require similar stipulations, preferring to donate anonymously. However, local civic leaders encouraged that the club in question be made public so that they could get the proper recognition they deserved.