Bad News Bears

When the executives at Paramount Pictures saw Billy Bob Thornton play a bitter, abusive, drunkard shopping-mall Kris Kringle in 2003's raunchy, bitingly funny Bad Santa, they must have said to themselves, “If we water this down to a PG-13, we'll make a mint!” Thus was born this lackluster remake of a once-edgy yet family-friendly Little League comedy full of cursing prepubescent underdogs that has lost both its bite and its heart. Filling in for Walter Matthau as the kids' boozehound coach, Thornton is uncharacteristically flat, while the usually creative Richard Linklater (Before Sunset, Waking Life) serves up uncharacteristically lazy direction. About half the kids are terrible actors, with the result that many of the jokes fall to the dugout floor with a thud, and the central plot about the players' come-from-behind transformation into a cohesive team has similar problems: Linklater wheels out their early failings (accompanied by Bizet's Carmen, as in the original) and later naturally shows them winning, but offers up very little struggle in between. Bad News Bears does admittedly score a few base hits with bad-taste one-liners, but there's nothing about this remake that remotely feels like a home run. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: Available in either widescreen or full screen versions, DVD extras include audio commentary by director Richard Linklater and co-writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, an “At Bat with the Bears” making-of featurette (12 min.), the 10-minute featurettes “Writing the Bad News Bears” and “Scouting for the Big Leagues” (on casting), six deleted scenes with optional commentary (9 min.), a five-minute “Spring Training” featurette on teaching the kids to play, three outtakes with optional commentary (2 min.), video baseball cards, and trailers. Bottom line: a winning extras package for a losing film.] (R. Blackwelder)