School of Baseball
I got a sneak preview Monday night of "Bad News Bears," and it's a charming little flick. The natural comparisons will be to the original 1976 film starring Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal, and also to last year's "Bad Santa," because of the foul language and the central presence of Billy Bob Thornton. The most striking similarity to me, though, is to Jack Black's 2003 head-banging version of "The Music Man"-- "School of Rock." The two films, it turns out, share the same director.Richard Linklater has a great ability to make smartass kids appealing (and that's no mean feat.) In "School of Rock," Linklater, along with screenwriter Mike White, set out to make the hippest family movie of all time, and largely succeeded. They populated the screen with a broad cross-section of children's character types, balancing the herd, but making each one unique and endearing. Here, the director is still aiming broad and low. He gives us yet a second film that will appeal to your brighter adults, while not sacrificing any home room credibility.
Halfway through the viewing, I became intrigued by the possible cultural implications of the film's harsh language. First of all, it's probably not even all that unrealistic that these Little League-age children and their adult supervisors would be dialoging in such a hefty percentage of George Carlin's infamous "seven dirty words," but number two-- an expression too tame for this film-- will people even be offended? Coming on the heals of "Bad Santa," the movie would seem ripe to spark some mild, media-overblown protest, but I suspect there will be none. This is because it's an adaptation of a 30 year old source, and a rather faithful one at that. Billy Bob's "coach" character may seem like a poor role model to those who only bother to catch the television ads, but what can the smoking, drinking, and carousing Thornton do to soil the culture that the beloved late Walter Matthau didn't already do on the same diamond a generation ago? It just goes to show that the recent cultural destruction of America is really nothing recent at all. It may even turn out that a destruction isn't taking place.
From a baseball standpoint, the film should be ranked either 'very good' or 'great.' Billy Bob is a believable former ballplayer. The ace slugger has a sweet right-handed swing, and the female pitcher, played by Sammi Kraft, appropriately gets the power of her pitching delivery from her legs. Linklater does a fine job of framing batting swings and blending the play results. Only once, that I can recall, does a "home run" look like a pop-up. (A most devastating mistake, though, is a plot-twisting change in the batting order in the championship game.)
The 1976 version of "Bad News Bears" was an important film to be added to baseball's cinematic lexicon during the salad days of the National Football League, and it's worth "re-imaging" now for a new generation. Adolescents too young to stay up for the end of World Series games, and easily bored by modern-day ballplayers with unimaginative nicknames, have an opportunity here to rediscover not only the enjoyment of watching the game, but playing it as well. The rugrats can also learn one of the valuable and timeless lessons of our national game, taught explicitly on-screen by Billy Bob Thornton's character-- "Baseball is easy to love. But it doesn't always love you back. It's like dating a German chick."
posted by CM @ 1:02 AM
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