The Bad News Bears (1976): Not Holding Up Well

The Bad News Bears (1976) - Oh what a time it was in the 1970s to be a kid acting like you were all grown up, and you had a movie that treated you the same way. Times do change and a movie that seemed fun then is a little scary now.

Walter Matthau stars as a former minor league baseball player, and current alcoholic; apparently beer tastes even better when you pour hard liquor in it. Surviving as a pool cleaner he is given the opportunity to coach a misfit little league team while being illegally paid for it under the table. Adding to the cast is Tatum O'Neal as a girl pitcher with a rocket arm and Jackie Earle Haley as a juvenile delinquent with amazing athletic skills the rest of the team of misfits lacks.

What sets The Bad News Bears apart from any other little league movie is these kids acted like major league players with wanton swearing, fighting, spitting and even consuming alcoholic beverages. For the time, and probably for many parents still today, it was funny seeing kids behave this way. Certainly for a lot of kids it was what they would like to get away with; not exactly a movie filled with role models.

Most uncomfortable with The Bad News Bears is the way the kids are treated, and often brutally, by the adults in the movie. From slapping to outright hitting, to giving them beer. For the time it was made some critics praised it for its brutal honesty. Brutal it is in its treatment of children, but it's still funny and entertaining if you can and are willing to look past that.

I give it 3 Daggers for its entertainment value, but I would not recommend it.