Review – The Bad News Bears

Anyone who played Little League baseball in the 70s is pretty much morally obliged to like this movie. Even if you didn’t, there are still plenty of entertaining moments in this tale of a down-and-out pool cleaner (Walter Matthau) who takes on the job of coaching a ball team full of misfits and losers. Along the way the story takes the de rigeur side-trips into serious exploration of the competitive nature of youth sports, but fortunately even these are usually delivered with the movie’s sarcastic sense of humor. Certainly this is a creature of its time; if nothing else, ten-year-olds with filthy mouths were a little more risqué in 1975 than they are now. But as kid flicks go, this is still one of the better ones. Worth seeing