The movie follows beer-breathed ex-minor-league ball player and professional pool cleaner Morris Buttermaker and his team of misfits as they compete in an ultra-competitive California little league.
Michael Ritchie keeps his dead-end cynicism in check and produces a genuinely funny comedy about a Little League team managed by a lovably drunken Walter Matthau.
[Ritchie] directs scenes for comedy even in the face of his disturbing material and that makes the movie all the more effective; sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we can't, and the movie's working best when we're silent.
Amiably engrossing satire on the 'win ethic' that offers a take-it-or-leave-it approach to its serious points about enforcing precociousness on kids, but consistently delights with its panoramic comic invention.
[VIDEO ESSAY] Rife with every non-politically-correct social tic that '70s America had to offer, "The Bad News Bears" (1976) is a sports comedy that serves as a cultural benchmark.
