Roger Ebert Review - "The Bad News Bears" ***
The movie, directed by Richard Linklater, is a fairly faithful remake of the 1976 film starring Walter Matthau, which inspired sequels starring William Devane and Tony Curtis. They had strengths of their own, but following Matthau's boozy vulgarian was not one of them. Thornton's performance is obviously fond of the Matthau approach, but finds a weary sadness in Coach Morris Buttermaker, who made it out of the minor leagues long enough to play in one major league game.
His team, the Bears, exists only because of a lawsuit filed by attorney Liz Whitewood (Marcia Gay Harden), who believes the Little League discriminates; she files a class action suit demanding that the league accept all players. The Bears end up with bad players in several categories: a black kid, two Spanish speakers, an Indian, a kid almost too little to hold the bat and another one in a motorized wheelchair. What they have in common is not their minority status, but their inability to play the game.
Read More