Michael Ritchie’s comedy, The Bad News Bears, stars Walter Matthau as the beer-guzzling, ex-minor-league ball player and professional pool cleaner Morris Buttermaker.
Grade: B (***1/2* out of *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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When he agrees to coach a little league team in San Fernando Valley, he fails to realize that he has inherited a bunch of peons and losers.
Since they play well-organized teams and lose, the parents threaten to disband the Bears to save the kids and themselves embarrassment. Not a quitter, Buttermaker refuses, though, and brings in a pair of ringers: Amanda Whurlizer (Tatum O’Neal), his ex-girlfriend’s tomboy daughter, and Kelly (Jackie Earle Haley), a cigarette-smoking delinquent who’s a gifted athlete.
With their help, the Bears manage to change their losing ways and qualify for the championship, where they face their arch-rivals, the Yankees.
There’s good chemistry between Matthau and Tatum O’Neal, in one of her more genuinely affecting and thus best post-Oscar winning roles.
Though rude and sometimes profane–this may have been the first time that kids had been using four-letter words in a major Hollywood picture–the film is also defined by credible dialogue and humor that’s understated and unforced.
The Bad News Bears was shot 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 shot in the council chamber at Los Angeles City Hall.
Commercial Appeal
The movie was a commercial hit: Made for a budget of $9 million, it earned over $42 million at the box-office.
The two leads made a risky but in hindsight clever decisions about compensation: Matthau was paid $750,000 plus over 10% of the theatrical rentals. Tatum O’Neal was paid $350,000 plus a percentage of the profits.
Like other Ritchie films, Bad News Bears offers a scathing look at the excessive pressure and value of competition in American culture.
Critical Status
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.
The unanticipated success of this comedy, made by the gifted (but underrated) director Michael Ritchie in 1976, spawned the kids’ sports film boom of the 1980s and 1990s.
The film was followed by sequels, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training in 1977 and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan in 1978, and a TV series.
Richard Linklater remade the first film in 2001.
Credits
MPAA: PG
Directed by Michael Ritchie
Written by Bill Lancaster
Produced by Stanley R. Jaffe
Cinematography John A. Alonzo
Edited by Richard A. Harris
Music by Jerry Fielding
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date: April 7, 1976
Budget $9 million
Box office $42.3 million
