Movies - The Bad News Bears

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	Movies - The Bad News Bears

The Bad News Bears is a 1976 film directed by Michael Ritchie. It stars Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal. The film was followed by two sequels, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training
in 1977 and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan
in 1978, and a short-lived television series, none of which were able to duplicate the success of the original. Also notable was the score by Jerry Fielding, which is an adaptation of the principal themes of Carmen.

A remake of the movie, directed by Richard Linklater with Billy Bob Thornton reprising the role of Morris Buttermaker, was released on July 22, 2005. See main article: Bad News Bears
.

Taqlines:

The coach is waiting for his next beer. The pitcher is waiting for her first bra. The team is waiting for a miracle. Consider the possibilities.
At last, a picture of kids as they really are.
A classic comedy about growing up!

Plot

Morris Buttermaker (Matthau), an alcoholic ex-professional baseball player, becomes the coach of a cellar-dwelling Little League team, the Bears. By recruiting a couple of unlikely prospects - an ex-girlfriend's 11-year old daughter (O'Neal), and local troublemaker Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley) - he turns the team into a winner.

The film was notable in its time for the amount of vulgarity (including profanity and ethnic slurs) placed into the mouths of the various child-actors who played the principal roles (specifically, a memorable Tanner Boyle, played by Chris Barnes, quoted as calling his teammates en masse "a bunch of Jews, spicks, niggers, pansies, and a booger-eating moron"). However, all of the questionable dialogue was used for comic effect. A true product of the mid-70s, the film includes a now-scandalous scene where an inebriated Buttermaker drives around the team, who are not wearing seatbelts, in his open-top convertible.

The Bad News Bears was filmed in and around Los Angeles, primarily in the San Fernando Valley. In the film, the Bears were sponsored by the fictional company Chico's Bail Bonds, a touch that fit in nicely with the idea that the Bears were a ragtag group of misfit kids who could not find a more respectable sponsor.

Cast

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Bad News Bears ]

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