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1976 film by Michael Ritchie From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Bad News Bears is a 1976 American sports comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie and written by Bill Lancaster. It stars Walter Matthau as an alcoholic ex-baseball pitcher who becomes a coach for a youth baseball team known as the Bears. Alongside Matthau, the film's cast includes Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Jackie Earle Haley, and Alfred W. Lutter. Its score, composed by Jerry Fielding, adapts the principal themes of Bizet's opera Carmen.
The Bad News Bears | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster by Jack Davis | |
Directed by | Michael Ritchie |
Written by | Bill Lancaster |
Produced by | Stanley R. Jaffe |
Starring | |
Cinematography | John A. Alonzo |
Edited by | Richard A. Harris |
Music by | Jerry Fielding |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 102 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages |
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Budget | $9 million[1] |
Box office | $42.3 million[2] |
Released by Paramount Pictures, The Bad News Bears received generally positive reviews. It was followed by two sequels, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training in 1977 and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan in 1978, a short-lived 1979–80 CBS television series, and a 2005 remake.
In 1976, Morris Buttermaker, an alcoholic pool cleaner and former minor-league baseball pitcher, accepts an under-the-table cash payment from a lawyer to coach his son's youth baseball league expansion team, the Bears. The team is made up of misfit players, formed as a settlement to a lawsuit brought against the league for excluding such players from other teams. Shunned by the more competitive teams (and their competitive parents and coaches), the Bears are the outsiders, and the least talented team in the Southern California league.
Buttermaker makes little effort to help the boys improve, accomplishing nothing before their first game except finding a sponsor to provide uniforms. He forfeits the opening game after the Bears allow 26 runs without recording an out.
With the entire team wanting to quit due to the humiliation of their first loss, Buttermaker begins to take his coaching more seriously, teaching basics like hitting, fielding, and sliding. In addition, he recruits two unlikely prospects: sharp-tongued Amanda Whurlitzer, the 11-year-old daughter of Buttermaker's former girlfriend and a skilled pitcher (trained by Buttermaker when she was younger); and the local cigarette-smoking, loan-sharking, Harley-Davidson-riding troublemaker, Kelly Leak, who also happens to be the best athlete in the area, but has been excluded from playing in the past due to his juvenile delinquency. With Amanda and Kelly on board, the team starts gaining more confidence, and the Bears begin to win. A subplot reveals the strained relationship between Buttermaker and Amanda as the team improves.
Eventually, the Bears make it to the championship game opposite the top-notch Yankees, who are coached by aggressive, competitive Roy Turner. As the game progresses, tensions rise between the teams and the coaches, as Buttermaker and Turner engage in ruthless behavior toward each other and the players in order to win the game. But when Turner strikes his son Joey, the pitcher, for ignoring his orders and intentionally throwing at the batter's head, Joey retaliates by holding on to a comebacker until the Bears' runners have all scored, and then walking off the field. Buttermaker realizes that he, too, has placed too much emphasis on winning, and puts his benchwarmers in to allow everyone to play. The Bears lose in the end, but despite Buttermaker's move, they nearly win the game. After the trophy award ceremony, Buttermaker gives the team beer, which they spray on each other in a field celebration as if they had won, telling the Yankees where they can put their championship trophy.
Top billed, shown in opening credits, were Matthau, O'Neal and Morrow.
The Bad News Bears was filmed in and around Los Angeles, primarily in the San Fernando Valley. The field where they played is in Mason Park on Mason Avenue in Chatsworth. In the film, the Bears were sponsored by an actual local company, "Chico's Bail Bonds". One scene was filmed in the council chamber at Los Angeles City Hall.
Matthau was paid $750,000 plus over 10% of the theatrical rentals.[3] Tatum O'Neal was paid $350,000 plus a percentage of the profits.[4] These were later estimated to be $1.9 million.[5]
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 97% based on reviews from 30 critics and an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Bad News Bears is rude, profane, and cynical, but shot through with honest, unforced humor, and held together by a deft, understated performance from Walter Matthau."[6]
In his 1976 review, critic Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and called it "an unblinking, scathing look at competition in American society."[7] Gene Siskel awarded two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling the film's characters "more types than people" and the kids' foul-mouth dialogue "overdone," though he found O'Neal's performance "genuinely affecting."[8] Variety called it "the funniest adult-child comedy film since 'Paper Moon'," and lauded the "excellent" script.[9] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times declared it "the best American screen comedy of the year to date," adding, "Bright, pugnacious and utterly realistic as most children seem to be today, these kids are drawn with much accuracy and are played beautifully."[10] Vincent Canby of The New York Times found the film only "occasionally funny" but praised screenwriter Bill Lancaster for "the talent and discipline to tell the story of 'The Bad News Bears' almost completely in terms of what happens on the baseball diamond or in the dugout."[11] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post praised it as "a lively, spontaneously funny entertainment" that "could rally a large parallel audience seeking less innocuous and stereotyped pictures with and about children."[12] Tom Milne of The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "miraculously funny and entirely delightful."[13]
"It’s so funny. It’s so sweet. It’s sweet and, yet, it’s completely wrong. It’s just so wrong on so many levels." — Tatum O'Neal[14]
Walter Matthau was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. The screenplay by Bill Lancaster, son of actor Burt Lancaster, was awarded "Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen" by the Writers Guild of America.