Movie Reviews
Richard Linklater, the director of the new “Bad News Bears,” has made all sorts of movies. A great many of them are about coming of age, or false rights of passage (“Dazed and Confused”). But his comedies are about joy. No matter what the plots are, no matter whom stars in them, no matter how funny they are, Richard Linklater comedies are about joy and what causes it.
In “The Bad News Bears,” Billy Bob Thorton plays an exterminator named Morris Buttermaker, and in the first moments of the film emerges from the basement of a costumer’s house with rats running rampant all around him. He casually looks over and says, “Yep, you sure have a rat problem,” and then leaves. On his way to his new second job (coaching little league baseball) he opens a can of beer, pours out about a third of it and refills it with liquor. He tells one of the kid’s mothers that it’s non-alcoholic. He swears and smokes, and refrains none in front of the kids. Yes, Buttermaker is a bum.
But we learn he used to play in the majors, only to find out that it was the last two-thirds of the seventh inning of one game. Then he became a drunk and now, as he explains, he keeps two jobs just to “rent a trailer...in the Valley!” Affectionately, he now holds claim to the Bears, a baseball team made up of every ethnicity this side of Los Angeles, plus the token fat kid and a cripple. But you know what? I liked the token fat kid and the cripple. When directed correctly, as done here, they’re funny.
So I must draw some comparisons between “Bad News Bears” and Linklater’s recent “School of Rock.” Both center on deadbeats manipulating children for their own gain, and both require talent from the actors who play those children. It is clear that both also succeed in getting laughs from the kids. I think it necessary to point how that the kids of “School of Rock” were funny because of their group effort. They all ricocheted gags off of and between each other. The kids of “Bad News Bears” are funny individually. That’s not a bad thing, but funny all itself considering the movie is about teamwork.
We then move on the second act of the film. This is the act where everyone is confused; confused with themselves and with each other. Although this is usually constructed for a payoff of sentimentality, Linklater keeps on trucking. He makes us wonder what goes on to these kids when they go home. I mean, we never see their parents, save two. Linklater uses their absence to up the independence theme for the kids. And yet somehow, by the end of it, we feel we know their parents; as if they’ve been a big part of the movie the entire time.
I admire Linklater for the way he filmed this. While most of movie is set on the baseball field during a game or practice, Linklater makes the action real. He shoots it as if it was a movie about a major league team, rather than little kids.
Speaking of kids, don’t take yours to see this. At least not the small ones. It is a PG-13 film, and the children in it are just as foul as Billy Bob Thorton’s character. (One of the rough-and-tumble kids on the team eventually teaches the nerdy kid how to give the finger.) At first I was taken aback by all this, but then realizing the age and reliving my elementary days, it’s not so inaccurate.
The third act of this film is where most sports comedies would crash and burn. It’s where the characters finally realize the error of their ways and seek redemption. Linklater makes sure we don’t think less of him, no. We aren’t even sure of the decisions of the characters until the very last scene. And by then, well, the Bears are celebrating by shaking up (non-alcoholic) beer bottles and dancing with strippers. It’s all about the joy, kids....pure joy. ***
Note: Linklater seems to be making a subtle – and kind of witty – statement about America in the final shot. Don’t take offense at it, it’s partially true. If you do take offense to it, it’ll ruin the entire film for you. Also, the token crippled kid (mentioned above) gets a lot of laughs, but not because he’s crippled. Considering the kid’s sense of humor, we’re not laughing at him, we’re actually laughing with him.