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| DIRECTED BY |
| Michael Ritchie
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| STARRING |
| Walter Matthau |
| Tatum O'Neal |
| Ben Piazza |
| Chris Barnes |
| Vic Morrow |
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Warning: Spoiler in Third Paragraph
Odd to think that this came from the same Harvard-educated director of the ultra-contemplative political satire �The Candidate,� but it did. That�s not to say that either of them are bad films, because �The Bad News Bears� is a thoroughly entertaining comedy that even contains a few genuinely pleasant surprises within its otherwise formulaic storyline.
The film was a big success when it was released, although I wasn�t expecting the impressive amount of profanity that it contains. Perhaps parents were just a lot more lenient with what their children watch back then in 1976. Either way, each and every player on the Bears has their own stereotypical personality � there�s the intelligent kid, the corpulent kid, the bespectacled kid, the foreign kid, the black kid, the sickly kid, the tough kid, the rebellious kid, etc. But here we have a female as well: Tatum O�Neal, who seems to have lost a lot of her �Paper Moon� charisma with age but she�s adorable nonetheless. Walther Matthau is endlessly watchable as the volatile-yet-benign coach of the team, who, through great stoicism, hauls off a number of memorable movie quotations.
The aforementioned surprises come during the end, when the film concludes in a refreshingly subversive way. It�s a great ending if it�s not looked upon as simply a way to set up the two pointless sequels. Nonetheless, it was smart of Ritchie to not simply take the easy way out and go for a �feel good� finale, and perhaps that�s why �The Bad News Bears� has managed to avoid the obscurity that has befallen many other more conventional films of its nature over the years.
