The Bad News Bears
—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
The Bad News Bears is funny….if you like humor that is completely dominated by putting someone else down. The movie revolves around the verbal domination of one character over another, like one long putdown. It’s like being in middle school all over again except that the vocabulary the youth involved use is more what you would expect out of Old School or Bad Boys. And I would have found that acceptable, if there had been some dramatic turnabout in the last portion of the movie, but there wasn’t. I did find in the movie some moments to learn from though, so like most movies, it wasn’t all bad.
Billy Bob Thornton’s character, Morris Buttermaker, drinks, smokes, curses and sleeps around—and the audience joins the youth on his team in seeing these actions over and over again. He obviously recognizes his shortcomings and admits as much to various players over the course of the movie, but even by the end he refuses to change. Buttermaker and the team badger each other in terms of weight, skill, physical handicap, sexual preference, attractiveness, religion, economic level, and more. No category is left unblemished by the time these bad news bears are done with them. And the saddest part for me is that a group of young actors was encouraged to see this sort of behavior as funny. And what about the youth who will be taken by their coach to go see this ‘baseball’ movie?
That is probably my biggest problem with the movie—you expect that all the garbage, funny and otherwise, heaped on you over the first part of the movie is only to highlight the difference in the end. And it would if it was a family-friendly, sports-as-remedy-for-society movie, but it’s not. This movie lacks plot (I won’t blow the ending for those who’ve never seen the original or the show, but it’s atypical for a sports movie), and just sets you up for crude joke followed by putdown.
The few times that Buttermaker seems to be turning the corner, I was sadly disappointed. The first occurs when he tells an Armenian player that he should lie to his father—the father thinks baseball is a waste of time and that he’ll embarrass himself. The young man’s coach encourages him to lie, and this is positively reinforced at the end of the movie. The second occurs at the typical ‘pep talk’ time toward the end of the movie as Buttermaker appears to recognize that his blind ambition is negatively impacting the development of his players and allows everyone to play (as a true rec team.) Instead of continuing this upswing, the movie closes with vulgarity and a round of ‘non-alcoholic’ drinks for the youth. As if adults don’t have a hard enough time recognizing that it isn’t really “non,� now young viewers of the movie will struggle with the connection as well.
I referred this past weekend to my church softball team as the “bad news bears,� thinking I was referring to a group of non-athletes who worked hard but couldn’t seem to ever succeed. I was wrong though, because these BNB were crass, mean, and unsportsmanlike—the antithesis of who we should be as Christians. I hope that viewers will see the BNB and recognize that we often get blinded by what is right in front of us. It seems like competition can be one of those things, as can alcohol, sex, social standing and more. Hopefully as we criticize what is wrong with the BNB, we can see what’s wrong with us, and make the change. We should play hard, look toward what is best for others, and regardless of the score, everyone will succeed.
—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
The Bad News Bears is funny….if you like humor that is completely dominated by putting someone else down. The movie revolves around the verbal domination of one character over another, like one long putdown. It’s like being in middle school all over again except that the vocabulary the youth involved use is more what you would expect out of Old School or Bad Boys. And I would have found that acceptable, if there had been some dramatic turnabout in the last portion of the movie, but there wasn’t. I did find in the movie some moments to learn from though, so like most movies, it wasn’t all bad.
Billy Bob Thornton’s character, Morris Buttermaker, drinks, smokes, curses and sleeps around—and the audience joins the youth on his team in seeing these actions over and over again. He obviously recognizes his shortcomings and admits as much to various players over the course of the movie, but even by the end he refuses to change. Buttermaker and the team badger each other in terms of weight, skill, physical handicap, sexual preference, attractiveness, religion, economic level, and more. No category is left unblemished by the time these bad news bears are done with them. And the saddest part for me is that a group of young actors was encouraged to see this sort of behavior as funny. And what about the youth who will be taken by their coach to go see this ‘baseball’ movie?That is probably my biggest problem with the movie—you expect that all the garbage, funny and otherwise, heaped on you over the first part of the movie is only to highlight the difference in the end. And it would if it was a family-friendly, sports-as-remedy-for-society movie, but it’s not. This movie lacks plot (I won’t blow the ending for those who’ve never seen the original or the show, but it’s atypical for a sports movie), and just sets you up for crude joke followed by putdown.
The few times that Buttermaker seems to be turning the corner, I was sadly disappointed. The first occurs when he tells an Armenian player that he should lie to his father—the father thinks baseball is a waste of time and that he’ll embarrass himself. The young man’s coach encourages him to lie, and this is positively reinforced at the end of the movie. The second occurs at the typical ‘pep talk’ time toward the end of the movie as Buttermaker appears to recognize that his blind ambition is negatively impacting the development of his players and allows everyone to play (as a true rec team.) Instead of continuing this upswing, the movie closes with vulgarity and a round of ‘non-alcoholic’ drinks for the youth. As if adults don’t have a hard enough time recognizing that it isn’t really “non,� now young viewers of the movie will struggle with the connection as well.
I referred this past weekend to my church softball team as the “bad news bears,� thinking I was referring to a group of non-athletes who worked hard but couldn’t seem to ever succeed. I was wrong though, because these BNB were crass, mean, and unsportsmanlike—the antithesis of who we should be as Christians. I hope that viewers will see the BNB and recognize that we often get blinded by what is right in front of us. It seems like competition can be one of those things, as can alcohol, sex, social standing and more. Hopefully as we criticize what is wrong with the BNB, we can see what’s wrong with us, and make the change. We should play hard, look toward what is best for others, and regardless of the score, everyone will succeed.—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
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