The Bad News Bears

A film set in a children's baseball league in California. Buttermaker once played in the minor leagues; now he cleans pools and drinks. He is offered money to coach a new team admitted to the league by a court decision, and accepts. The team is bad. Most of the children have never played; in the first game they cannot even stand in the field and it is abandoned. To improve them Buttermaker goes outside the rules: he finds the daughter of a former girlfriend. Amanda is a good pitcher and joins. Then Kelly, the most troublesome boy in the neighbourhood, is brought in with his motorbike. The team starts winning. At that point Buttermaker changes too, and the wish to win gets in front of the children. What the film is interested in is not success but what adults make of children's sport. The coach of the rival team is the extreme case; he strikes his own son on the field. The close does not follow the usual pattern of the genre. Walter Matthau plays Buttermaker, Tatum O'Neal plays Amanda and Vic Morrow the rival coach. Michael Ritchie directed. A solid choice for anyone who likes the sports comedies of the 1970s and unconventional family films. Before you watch, know this: the children's language is coarse throughout and some jokes of the period are uncomfortable now.