July 22, 2005

I have a confession to make: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the original BAD NEWS BEARS movies in full. Parts, maybe. I know people love the first one. I don’t remember it. So this review comes from the rare perspective of a person who saw Richard Linklater’s remake in theaters and is returning to it after 20 years of still not seeing the original to find out why nobody seemed to think this stacked up to it. Ignorance is bliss!

For me the main movie to compare it to is BAD SANTA, which came from the same screenwriters, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (CATS & DOGS). Obviously it’s not as good, but it’s the second best movie at presenting Billy Bob Thornton as an alcoholic asshole in a way that is somehow really funny and ultimately sweet in a way that doesn’t seem too phony because the guy is still an asshole, he just made a small gesture that shows he’s trying. This is a PG-13 family-friendly-ish sports movie, so the change is a little bigger than just wanting to give a stuffed elephant to a child after getting shot by the police, but it still maintains his acerbicness to pretty uncomfortable levels until the last couple innings of the big game.

Thornton’s version of Morris Buttermaker is a loser has-been who works as an exterminator and lives in a trailer, but he’s pretty good looking in his way and dates many strippers. He once pitched 2/3 of an inning for the Mariners (kicked out because “I punched an ump, really just a bitch slap, how was I supposed to know he was a bleeder?”) so rich lady Liz Whitewood (Marcia Gay Harden, SPACE COWBOYS) recruits him to coach a little league team she filed an injunction to create just because her son Toby (Ridge Canipe, young Johnny Cash from WALK THE LINE) was rejected from the other teams. The Bears are literally all the last kids picked. It’s a good set up taken from the original that in the aughts played as a jab at overbearing parents of the era. Harden plays the character as a pretty ridiculous person, but well-meaning, and her kid seems sweet so you want him to benefit from her possibly misguided efforts.

The most dominant personalities on the team are Tanner Boyle (Timmy Deters, DADDY DAY CARE) and Mike Engelberg (Brandon Craggs, FEVER PITCH remake), two foul mouthed little shit talkers who are always getting in fights with everybody, especially each other, despite a significant size difference. Boyle is a little guy with long blond hair, the most ‘70s thing about the movie, but we know it’s 2005 because of the diet that Engelberg is on. I don’t like that everybody keeps making fat jokes about him, but I do like that early on when Buttermaker notices him drop a Ziploc bag full of bacon he explains that he’s on Atkins and he doesn’t say it like “oh woe is me” but more like “fuck you for asking such a stupid question.”

That’s part of the movie’s approach that was retro at the time, and would definitely bother some people now – everybody is a little asshole so they say horrible shit to each other (Boyle in particular uses a variety of slurs) but the movie trusts us to know why that’s wrong and why it’s still nice that these little shits become friends and learn to feel better about themselves. Like GRAN TORINO for kids. I suppose it helps that there’s not really racial animosity, just ignorance on Buttermaker’s part that luckily goes over the kids’ heads. I don’t think Ahmad (Kenneth ‘K.C.’ Harris) knows what’s going on when Buttermaker tries to relate to connect with him by saying “Yo bro, what up,” or when he can’t believe he’s wearing #25 for Marc McGwire.

“But he’s a white.”

“Yes, he’s from Claremont. He’s my favorite player.”

Another example is Matthew Hooper (Troy Gentile, who later played young Jack Black in NACHO LIBRE and TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY), who joins the team but mostly stays in the dugout because he’s in a wheelchair. It will rub many people the wrong way (and it’s too bad they didn’t cast a kid who actually uses a wheelchair) but I can get on board with the movie’s refusal to tip toe around him, believing it’s a sign of respect to joke about him in confidence that we accept him as one of the Bears and admire him for not giving a fuck.

The kids really can’t play, but (as in the original, I believe) Buttermaker gives them a chance by recruiting two good players: an ex-girlfriend’s daughter Amanda (Sammi Kane Kraft) and dirt bike riding hellraiser Kelly (Jeffrey Davies). Amanda is trying to be more feminine as she grows up and Kelly is too much of a rebel to join a team, but of course they come through. I think Buttermaker’s relationship with Amanda is nice – he’s like her estranged father but they’re not related at all, he really has no obligation to her, so it’s meaningful that he does care about her and become her friend.

Also I would like to note that Amanda finds Kelly at a skate park, so we can add him to the Summer 2005 Shredders list along with all the LORDS OF DOGTOWN, Lindsay Lohan’s character in HERBIE FULLY LOADED and Mouse from LAND OF THE DEAD. Also there’s a good dumb joke that Buttermaker follows Amanda to see “a skate punk band” called the Blood Farts. When the pit starts he thinks he’s in a fight and then he yells “Put me down!” as he gets body passed. (I believe Jiminy Glick also got body passed this summer.)

I suppose it’s the same joke over and over, but I enjoy watching Buttermaker be Buttermaker. He’s introduced at his day job, casually following a swarm of rats out of a perfect suburban basement while drinking a beer, and telling the pearl-necklace wearing home owner that he’s done for the day but she can make a followup appointment. The next time we see him he’s at the little league field adding whisky to his non-alcoholic beer. He brings the kids to Hooters after the games, smokes cigarillos and drinks beer while hitting the ball to the kids during practices. He doesn’t make much effort to be accepted by other coaches and parents.

Greg Kinnear (MYSTERY MEN) is perfect casting for the villain, little-league-Yankees coach Ray Bullock, who during the day is “over at Chevy Valley Subaru.” He wears the exact right yellow-tinted glasses for his character and his team has more professional looking uniforms with turtlenecks. Through the cinematic power of the slobs vs. snobs archetype we can hate him more than Buttermaker even when they’re being terrible in the exact same ways. With Ray we think “fuck that guy” and with Buttermaker we think “oh, Buttermaker, don’t do that!” And Buttermaker earns his status as the good guy (or not as bad guy) when he realizes they’re both coaching in the same competitive way and decides to switch it up and let all the kids play even if it will make them lose.

I’ve mentioned somewhere before that I played basketball and soccer as a kid, but I was always maybe the second worst kid on a really good team. I wouldn’t say watching this was triggering (I’d never hear the end of it from Buttermaker) but it hits me somewhere deep in my stomach when I see some kid under pressure to make a play he’s probly not gonna make and then, yep, not making it. On the other hand there’s a part where timid Timmy Lupus (Tyler Patrick Jones, MINORITY REPORT) gets his first hit and hears his name chanted by the strippers from team sponsor Bo Peep’s Gentlemen’s Club who come to all the games. Judging by the way he smiles afterward I don’t think he has the stirrings yet, but it still felt really good to have a bunch of adult women, especially those ones, celebrating him.

I remember a coach of a rival soccer team who was infamous for yelling at refs and his own players and almost getting into fights. I don’t think I would find him amusing as an adult, although I kind of did then. I think he did it way more than Buttermaker and in a more threatening way so I actually didn’t think of him once while watching this. I would have to speculate that he died young and without ever improving himself. Buttermaker at least makes an attempt.

BAD NEWS BEARS got mediocre to bad reviews at the time, did not make back its budget in theaters, has not as far as I’ve noticed gained any respect since. Pretty much anybody I’ve talked to hasn’t seen it or seems bothered by the very idea of its existence. I can see why they’d find it pointless. It’s a remake, not a BATMAN BEGINS style reinvention – it reuses the idea of scoring it to music from Bizet’s Carmen, most of the characters are the same, they even got artist Phil Roberts to imitate the Jack Davis caricature style of the original poster (as he’d done for DETROIT ROCK CITY). But personally I think whatever excuse you need to do an underdog sports movie as BAD SANTA meets SCHOOL OF ROCK is worth doing. I support it. I enjoyed this at the time and I enjoyed it now.

I mean I wasn’t in the market for a kids sports movie (or coaching movie) but I just happen to really like seeing Thornton play a comical asshole, same way I enjoy seeing Tom Hardy do an accent. It’s always gonna have power over me, especially when he’s hanging out with kids and very slowly coming around to being less of an asshole. It worked with poor oblivious Thurman Merman in BAD SANTA and here it works with a whole squad of them, many very capable of giving it right back, so it’s not too much when Buttermaker tells Engelberg, “I got half a mind to find your old man and kick him in the nuts so hard he can never foul the earth with another little shit like you.”

Is it contradictory that I hate watching the loser assholes in WEDDING CRASHERS but love watching the one in this? I don’t think so because I feel the joke of the crashers is that they’re violating the rules of society but everybody is charmed by them so they’re getting away with it and don’t you kinda wish you could do that too? But the joke of Buttermaker is that he’s completely out of line and everyone kind of looks on in horror but doesn’t know what to say and no, you wouldn’t want to be that guy. Also the unlikely repaired relationship at the end is a little more earned, I think. He’s been a jerk and is trying to be nicer, he didn’t fall in love under a false identity and now ask his victim to break off her engagement to be with him.

I’d be surprised to find any nostalgia for this one – there were definitely far fewer kids who saw it than CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. But I remember there were a couple of them in attendance when I saw it and they were delightedly repeating the line “See ya next year, bitches!” on the way out, so it felt like a success to me.