The remake of The Bad News Bears, minus the definite article, plugs in Billy Bob Thornton in the Walter Matthau part, a former professional baseball player and current full-time drunk, enlisted to coach a team of Little League rejects (now sponsored not by Chico's Bail Bonds, though that establishment gets a passing glance, but by Bo-Peep's Gentlemen's Club, also supplying cheerleaders). This substitution serves the experimental purpose of measuring how well the comedy will hold up when all charm and charisma are removed from the lead role, leaving the kids in the care of Bad Santa: "You guys look like the last shit I took." The results would be of no interest whatsoever were it not for the shock value of having Richard Linklater, the "Rohmer-esque" director of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, at the helm. (Did he willingly consent to the re-use of themes from Bizet's Carmen -- straight from the 1976 original -- for "humorous" counterpoint?) Of course some of the shock will have been absorbed beforehand by his middle-of-the-road School of Rock. But only some. Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden, Sammi Kane Kraft, Jeffrey Davies. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
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