The Bad News Bears (1976)

They don’t let kids be mean in movies anymore and we are worse for it.

I miss when kids in movies acted like actual kids. The Bad News Bears is a cast of genuinely mean little monsters and somehow they feel more real than any child I’ve seen on screen in the last fifteen years. They curse. They tease each other ruthlessly. They break rules. They smoke. They’re awful in the specific, petty, regional way that real kids are awful, and it’s beautiful.

Compare that to anything coming out now and you can feel the difference. Modern kid performances usually feel like theater kid auditions. Everyone’s projecting. Everyone’s adorable. Everyone has clearly been told to be likeable. These kids weren’t told anything except where to stand and they’re better for it.

Walter Matthau is perfect casting. Of course he is, he’s Walter Matthau. The slumped shoulders, the perpetual hangover energy, the way he looks at children like they’re a chore he can’t get out of. He’s doing so much with so little. Every line reading is gold.

I am not a sports movie guy. I am especially not a baseball guy. And yet this might be my favorite baseball movie ever made??? It’s funny, it’s mean, it’s heartwarming in a way that earns it because the rest of the movie is so prickly. The sentiment hits because it’s not asking for it.

I get why it’s a classic. They couldn’t make this today and we’re all a little worse for it.

Also on Letterboxd