The Bad News Bears Go to Japan is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Seriously.
Not a single part of the movie works. It is a poor sequel. It has an incomprehensible, lazy, nearly nonexistent plot. The acting is lousy. The titular Bears get barely anything to do, those few who do return. There are hardly any jokes in what’s meant as a comedy. The directing is shoddy and listless. If ever I’ve seen a franchise killer, this is it.
And on top of all that, the DVD isn’t compatible with my computer. So no pics.
There’s an interesting phenomenon with sequels, where the first sequel often does far better than its quality merits, over love of the original. Often the gross even outshines the first film’s box office take, working on accumulated memories of the first (theatrical, home video, etc.). It’s often not until the second sequel that you get an idea for how beloved Part Two really was, which is why is behooves potential franchise-mongers to maintain quality at this early stage.
The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (aka # 2) was popular on par with The Bad News Bears, at least as far as moneymaking went. Of course it made a complete mess of continuity and realism, in the underdog sports genre where such things shouldn’t even be possible. Examining the producer credits on Part Three, Go to Japan, the desperation is instantly obvious, how Part One’s director, Michael Ritchie, was anxious to press on with a stillborn Bad News Bears franchise at all costs. As Go to Japan’s theatrical performance attests, it seems no one but the producers desired more Bad News Bears movies.
No one…except the Japanese. As befits a nation even more baseball-obsessed than the U.S. (it’s their # 1 sport, other than Pokémon fighting), they loved everything Bad News Bears. So it didn’t matter if the domestic audiences found Go to Japan horrid tripe, for some reason the Japanese would eagerly eat up a condescending and storyless travelogue of their own country. They’re a weird people that way. And it guarantees something resembling profitability for Go to Japan, even if this move is an admission that the franchise is kaput.
All this desperation was palpable, even to the unremarkable child stars who can only claim the prior two films to their résumés. So very many of the “bad news” Little League Bears are bye-bye, leaving a very sad returning cast indeed.
Gone: Tanner Boyle, Timmy Lupus, Alfred Ogilvie, Jose Agilar. Oh, and also Carmen, but we could care less about him.
Returning: Ahmad Rahim (Erin Blunt), the other Agilar boy (George Gonzales), Jimmy Feldman the Useless (Brett Marx), Rudi Stein the Even More Useless (David Pollock), and Mike Engelberg (Jeffrey Louis Star, who’d only joined the cast in Breaking Training, such is his worth).
Amongst these kids, the only ones with “personality” are Ahmad, Agilar and Engleberg – those personalities being “black,” “Mexican” and “fat,” respectively. You know, what’s visually communicable. In the entire picture, there is honestly NO effort made to personify these kids, or do anything whatsoever with ‘em! So why were they so eager to make a third Bad News Bears?
Oh, and to round out the roster and force things to a manageable baseball team size are three new ciphers with just as much indisctinction: E.R.W. Tillyard III (Matthew Anton), Abe Bernstein (Abraham Unger) and Mustapha Rahin (Scoody Thornton).
I only know of the first two by online sources; nothing in the film points ‘em out, or grants names, or anything. But Mustapha makes his presence known, as he is Ahmad’s little brother, and a chance for Bad News Bears to go epitomize the worst of child acting. We’re talking cloying, precocious, mush-mouthed, the sort of thing that’d inspire “aahs” from the studio audience on an ‘80s sitcom. This is sub-Gary Coleman bad; hell, it’s sub-Shavar Ross bad! Every moment wasted on Mustapha is a moment that could’ve done something, anything with an original Bear!
There’s gotta be an adult on hand, coordinating this freak show. As William Devane has done like Walter Matthau and abandoned ship (how’s that for a ringing endorsement?), again they gotta create a new “role model” from whole cloth. Cue – and it pains me to type this – Tony Curtis in just about the least dignified performance ever perpetrated by a Hollywood legend. Curtis plays Marvin Lazar, a conman, shyster and showbiz phony of the sort I doubt has ever existed in real life. It’s a chance for a dreadfully awful variation on Curtis’ Cary Grant impersonation from Some Like It Hot, several decades out of date and played with all the subtlety of a “Saturday Night Live” character. Lazar is a hatefully amoral dipshit, and he has no arc. And this is meant to be our main character?!
What down-on-his-luck director did they wrangle to helm this abomination? John Berry (not Barry, who’s awesome), returning from a lengthy Hollywood exile over the McCarthy era Communist blacklists. Prior to this, Berry worked during the Golden Age of Hollywood with stars such as Lillian Gish and Veronica lake, making films like From This Day Forward, Cross My Heart, Casbah, and many other things I feel deficient for not knowing about previously (I don’t watch enough post-midnight TCM, apparently). Evidently, Berry was pretty mediocre in the great days, and Go to Japan is proof he hadn’t improved with age. And as Berry’s last completed film, this is pretty fucking sorrowful.
Even at its start, The Bad News Bears Go to Japan has many strikes against it (two, let’s say). It feels the need to build on the unlikely plot of Breaking Training, positing a Bears team more respected than ever, even while it’s reduced to the dreggiest of its dregs. (Wow, “dreggiest” is apparently a real word!) Despite being a “second place team from a minor pre-teen league in Van Nuys” (the movie actually says this, in a too-little-too-late moment of context), they’re somehow national treasures, and regular fixtures on the television. And while the remaining Bears watch at home, it is this pre-taped TV show which is responsible for all the sequel-setting exposition. That is a mightily clunky method.
As an attempt to resolve the “no-cursing” problem from Breaking Training (without, you know, letting the Bears swear), Engleberg is allowed a cuss. Once. On TV. Bleeped out. Then never another bad word uttered again (from the kids; Curtis gets a few). That doesn’t solve the problem, it just highlights it more!
Curtis’ Lazar sees the Bears on this very same TV show, sitting calmly and doing nothing of interest. Desperate for an entertainment triumph (for some damned unclear reason), Lazar decides he shall make stars of these Bears. This reasoning is never properly explored, a shame since it’s the basis for the entire movie. Specifically, Lazar decides he shall fly the Bears over to Japan to face that country’s best Little League team, something which is apparently very easy to arrange (it’s briefly stated the actual U.S. champions have dropped out of such an engagement). And since the Bad News Bears sequel universe is one where parents are all morons, it takes Lazar no effort at all to wrangle up these Bears, without a proper game plan or travel itinerary, and whisk them off to Japan. Jesus, people, are you trying to get your kids abused?!
The main point of The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, such as it is, is to showcase Japan. This is the only unique proposition this sequel brings to the Bears table – a location change. How thoroughly bereft of inspiration were they? It seems the idea was that Japan, that mystical and unknowable land of winds and ghosts, was to carry the entire film on its own, that pointing a listless camera at whatever the filmmakers found in this foreign nation would be enough to overcome characters who are either nonexistent or rancid. It’s never quite racist, not even in the Lost in Translation “ain’t they short?” kinda way, but it is very offensive nonetheless.
Here’s the thing: The Bad News Bears Go to Japan is supposed to be a comedy. It has no jokes. Instead, the assumption is that simply showing Japan, as it is, will account for “humor,” that it’d be funny to non-Japanese that they play baseball, drive cars, speak words, have technologies, and breathe through their noses. I can’t even picture this slack-jawed “exoticism” passing in the ‘70s. And it’s filmed with zero flair. The approach is mired somewhere between a travelogue documentary and a Bad News Bears movie, without being either one. The events we see are staged, scripted, intentional, and yet they play like 90 minutes of stuff they just saw going on in Japan. It is bad.
Also, the soundtrack uses Chinese music! Eh, if it’s Asian…
For what passes as a “plot,” to give an idea of how dysfunctional it is: The Bears have their baseball match against the Japanese team (whose shirts simply say “Japan,” so I guess the team is called the Japans). The Bears are so terrible at the game of baseball now that they fall to infighting at the top of the first inning. Lazar (who’s never seen them play before, and whose entire career is riding on this game) has invited a horde of Japanese media types to hype this game into some sort of vague international…thing. I doubt even Lazar knows what he’s trying to do, except he expects worldwide coverage of it. But with the score 10 – 1 (in favor of the Japans) at the end of the first, the media people tire of the Bears in a very believable way, and leave.
Of note: Just about the only Asian worthy enough to warrant an acting credit in this film is Tomisaburo Wakayama as Coach Shimizu. This guy was the star of the kickass Lone Wolf and Cub chanbara film series, and therefore deserved better.
So the baseball game (the poorly, poorly directed baseball game) that we’d expect to be the focus, the climax of The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, rather ends 20 minutes in. That leaves the Bears and Lazar to float aimlessly throughout the island like a yūrei. From now on, they mostly stare without interest or involvement at whatever “cultural” thing they run across. The Bears don’t even get dialogue. It’s literally just The Bad News Bears GO to Japan, and nothing else. It’s not even The Bad News Bears INTERACT With Japan. Yeesh!
Meanwhile…It turns out Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley) is in this movie, though I’d neglected him in the desultory “Bears round-up” above. That’s because he doesn’t even ever appear onscreen with his fellow Bears, with the exception of the baseball scenes (which are severely light on the ground). It’s almost as though he was thrown in as an afterthought, a reshoot, which is very likely the case. So anyway, “bad boy” Kelly is also in Japan…
And how do they utilize the future Academy Award-nominee? With a romantic subplot! And not just any romantic subplot…The worst, least essential romantic subplot in motion picture history!
For as Kelly strolls the Shinjuku district, he spies an attractive Japanese girl who never once even utters her name (or any English), so I don’t even know what to call her. So that actress escapes a citation. Kelly follows (read: stalks) this girl all throughout urban Tokyo, despite repeated displays of hatred on her part. We all know the maxim that romantic comedy behavior could earn a prison term in real life? This is the epitome of that! Kelly even freaking sneaks into the girl’s house, completely without invitation or anything. At last she acquiesces, and decides to romance it up with him, if it’ll just move this crap on to another phase.
The rest, entire rest of this subplot is comprised of romantic montages. Seriously, there’s no dialogue, no nothing, just still long shots of Kelly and…Girl standing motionlessly next to each other in a variety of settings, one after another. Seeing as Kelly is pre-sexual in age, and merely a one-week tourist in Japan, I dunno where they think they’re going with this, but a lazy filmmaker will insert romance wherever it don’t belong whenever emotion otherwise fails him. I have nothing to say about Kelly’s involvement in this picture.
Lazar spends this time struggling to reignite media interest in a Bears/Japans baseball game. He never explains his ideas clearly to anybody, not even the countless other aging white men who are suddenly here in Tokyo. Chalk it up to my growing apathy towards this motion picture, but I couldn’t even be arsed to note who they were. So very many scenes follow which are supposed to be a part of Lazar’s big media frenzy ploy, so it’d’ve been nice to know what he was up to. For what scant plot there is, screenwriter Paul Brickman sure does a lousy job of clarifying it.
Most of Lazar’s unclear efforts involve illegally finding ways to sneak his Bears onto Japanese television. One effort concerns some martial arts fight, allowing the first overt Rocky reverence in the series. We watch fighters (American fighters) for roughly 7 minutes, without a cutaway to Lazar or the Bears or anyone. This movie is worthless. It mistakes a growing non-Asian interest in kung fu with an excuse to just showcase the most lackluster kung fu imaginable, sans editing.
At last Lazar, via a means I don’t even want to start thinking about, convinces the Japanese boxing champion to face Lazar in the ring, with cameras rolling. Oh, and Lazar is wearing a Mexican luchadore outfit – and I realize I’ve just made this movie sound 10x more interesting than it is. The idea is that Lazar will get thoroughly beaten within an inch of his life – a cause I can get behind! – whereupon the Bears in the audience shall descend upon the Japanese boxer and defeat him. And he didn’t even tell the Bears beforehand! He simply trusts they will do this – which they do. Luckily it goes over well(ish), with no child getting sent to the emergency room or morgue. And the cameras eat it up! This movie is retarded.
What they see in these Bears, who’s to say. Memories from the first, for there’s nothing here… Anyway, the Bears will again play the, uh, the Japans, only this time with proper television hype. Part of that hype is an appearance on a Japanese talk show. Now, is the idea of the “Happy Days” theme being sung in Japanese inherently hilarious to you? Better hope so. How ‘bout “Moon River?” Or “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” sung in Engrish? Really, that’s what Go to Japan has become now, just a gawking yokel marveling at Japanese TV. Something YouTube is much better at!
Now it’s a Godzilla knockoff (because without doing research, Godzilla = Japan). One of the Japanese players does a baseball bat ad, smacks about Fauxzilla and speaks in Japanese – which is on its own meant to be the joke. GOD DAMN THIS MOVIE STRAIGHT TO THE DEPTHS OF HELL!
Skipping over a whole sumo-load of more worthless crap, we get to the game. Which is being played in an actual goddamn stadium, as opposed to the dirt field they’d reserved the first time around. The time has come, with like 20 minutes left, for something halfway resembling drama to be awkwardly inserted into the film. This means temptation for Lazar, as his fellow crackers suggest throwing in some ringers to ensure a good score to make this game a better TV sell.
This is supposed to be the moment where Lazar proves he’s grown as a human being, by hanging around endlessly with children. He does not. He accepts the ringers, and goes to cuss out his beloved Bears too, for good measure. Right, so they’re building up to a character arc later…right? Nope! Lazar doesn’t care, he never learns, and…well…
It seems someone forgot to tell John Berry the central tenet of the sports comedy, that the underdog team does well in the final game. The Bears suck more than ever now, if that’s possible to comprehend. I officially cease paying any attention to this movie, letting the DVD spin away to a disinterested room as I play Tetris online. Imagine my surprise, then, when I look back at the TV only to see the in-film Japanese audience treating the match with equal distaste! They storm out of the stadium early, L.A. style, as no one can even bother pretending that The Bad News Bears Go to Japan has any value.
Not only does Lazar not get the showbiz success he’d pined away for in such disgusting vocalisms, but even Shimizu is fired over the debacle! Way to ruin many people’s lives, Lazar! You ASS! And not only that, the movie goes all tasteless in its epilogue and suggests Shimizu is enthusiastically contemplating seppuku!
Astoundingly, even now the moviemakers somehow think they can salvage a feel good ending out of this fecal matter. Shimizu goes to the window to best stab his gut open in full view of Tokyo, when he sees in the dirt field below the Bears happily playing baseball with the Japans, just like that. Of course they could only choose to do this spontaneous thing off screen, because otherwise there’d be no way this film could coherently convey the decision. This somehow unites Shimizu and Lazar, one of them a jobless and dishonored old man, the other one awaiting inevitable lawsuits from his fellow agents (they even spell this out). And yet the music swells, as though there is “happiness” in this cynical and debased conclusion. DEATH! DEATH TO ALL WHO MADE THIS!
You’d think there nothing more to say at this film’s end, as there is no point in dwelling upon the none-too-soon end of The Bad News Bears as a franchise. But the myopic producers still refused to believe they’d suctioned this ravaged cinematic corpse dry. Come March 24, 1979, for a mighty run of 23 whole episodes, CBS ran a sitcom: “The Bad News Bears.” This is some bargain bin pop cultural effluvia here, something too surreal to even contemplate. It didn’t work. The show enjoyed poor ratings, even while it tried replaying the beloved Part One Coach Buttermaker storyline (with a new Buttermaker, natch). It was canceled.
Two lousy sequels and one lousy TV show later, and all anyone can remember is 1976’s The Bad News Bears. At least its memory wasn’t sullied, despite the producers’ best efforts. That was a good movie, but completely undeserving of a franchise! Not all movies can sustain serialization, and The Bad News Bears is a prime example of why some story types shouldn’t be sequelized. Of course, they can still be remade…
Related posts:
• No. 1 The Bad News Bears (1976)
• No. 2 The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)
• No. 4 Bad News Bears (2005)
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