Review – The Bad News Bears (2005)

They could have stopped the title after the first two words. The original was a clever production about a pack of misfit kids on a little league team coached by a cynical drunk with a heart of gold. This one’s ostensibly the same thing, but instead of clever it comes across as trite and vile. Part of the problem is that back in the 70s kids that swore and scrapped and otherwise misbehaved were a welcome divergence from the Brady Bunch vision of childhood that dominated the media at the time. Now foul-mouthed brats are a dime a dozen (and even at that price you’re being overcharged). Further, Walter Matthau worked in the coach role in ways Billy Bob Thornton can only dream of. In short, this was yet another entry in the long list of movies that weren’t crying out for a remake to begin with, and certainly didn’t deserve redoing like this. See if desperate