• The Bad News Bears (2003)

    Hard-drinking, ex-minor-league hopeful Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) grumpily agrees to coach a Little League team at the behest of lawyer-councilman Bob Whitewood (Ben Piazza), who has a vendetta against the league for excluding his marginally talented son from play. After failing with his new team of misfits, Buttermaker enlists feisty and gifted pitcher Amanda Whurlitzer...

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The Bad News Bears
83
metacriticBased on 10 Critics
87
Based on 7 Users

Release Date: July 27th, 2003

DVD Release Date: February 12th, 2001

PG |1 hr 42 min

Plot Summary

Hard-drinking, ex-minor-league hopeful Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) grumpily agrees to coach a Little League team at the behest of lawyer-councilman Bob Whitewood (Ben Piazza), who has a vendetta against the league for excluding his marginally talented son from play. After failing with his new team of misfits, Buttermaker enlists feisty and gifted pitcher Amanda Whurlitzer (Tatum O'Neal) to lead the charge -- but can he find the luck and patience to whip these outcasts into shape?

Cast: Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Jackie Earle Haley, Alfred Lutter III, Brandon Cruz

Director: Michael Ritchie

Genres: Comedy , Children

Production Co: Paramount Pictures

Distributors: Paramount Pictures

Keywords: Underdog, Transformation, Heartwarming, 1970s, Cheeky, Rivalry, Son, Father

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Ratings & Reviews

  • 75
    Roger EbertChicago Sun-Times

    The Bad News Bears is, in a way, [Ritchie's] most harrowing portrait of how we'd sometimes rather win than keep our self-respect. He 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. show more

  • 100
    Rolling Stone

    The Bad News Bears is about kids, but they're real kids, not bland, cutesy, lovable Hollywood moppets. These pre-teens are unwashed, obnoxious, cynical, fractious, gleefully profane, unrepentantly juvenile, and deeply untrusting of any sort of authority — in other words, just like the kids you probably played team sports with. show more

  • 90
    Slate

    The movie is both an antidote to the sentimentality that currently affects sports movies and the last hurrah for the glorious disreputability that characterized the genre in the late '60s and early '70s. show more

See all critic reviews on metacritic.com

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Awards

Nominated Actor
British Academy of Film & Television Arts (1977)