The Bad News Bears

The success this underdog comedy from director Michael Ritchie almost single-handedly spawned the kids' sports film boom of the 1980s and '90s. When beer-breathed ex-minor-league ball player and professional pool cleaner Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) agrees to coach a little league team in the ...more

Bad News Bears is one of the most delightful blends of family and adult entertainment ever made. The underdog-made-good story may please and kids in the audience, but it's only one facet of the film's entertaining, realistic portrait of little league baseball. The real appeal comes from spot-on performances by Tatum O'Neal and Walter Matthau. Their relationship, as a grizzled divorcé and the pubescent girl trying to make him her father, is finely tuned and immensely enjoyable. Their natural ...more