The Bad News Bears (1976)

Baseball, Beer, and Bad Behaviour - The Bad News Bears review by griggs

There’s a moment watching this when you realise it’s not the film the poster promised. More Altman than Disney, more shrug than lesson — The Bad News Bears got marketed as family entertainment, which in retrospect is genuinely baffling.

Matthau is doing what Matthau does: professionally dissolute, chronically unimpressed, and somehow magnetic. His dynamic with Tatum O’Neal sits a little uncomfortably now — not predatory exactly, but the film doesn’t seem to notice the awkwardness, which is a problem in itself. The racial slurs and general moral vacancy of the adults aren’t played for critique either. They just are. That’s both the film’s honesty and its most dated quality.

The kids feel real rather than cast, the baseball keeps you watching, and the team’s dysfunction earns what follows rather than just demanding you accept it. I’d also give it credit for being unusually honest about losing — the Bears come second and the film basically shrugs. No redemption arc, nothing resembling a life lesson.

Some of it you’d never make now, and you can see why. Still very funny, though. The discomfort is part of the texture.